Q A_from_Industry_Day_(151109).docx

W91RUS16GEF1 AMD 06

Global Enterprise Fabric (GEF) Industry Day Questions & Answers as of 9 November 2015

1. Does it matter that the VMs can teleport VMs between different volume types?

A: No. Ideally, the process is completely transparent, resulting in no disruption of service.

2. How does NETCOM plan to manage a heterogeneous environment?

A: The Government is looking to industry to help us understand what tools and technologies will be needed to manage a large heterogeneous environment.

3. If so, would a single pane of glass to manage the NETCOM heterogeneous environment be of interest?

A: Yes, as stated during the presentation, the Government is seeking this capability.

4. How do solutions like ArcSight improve the NETCOM enterprise?

A: Arcsight is a NETOPs tool that assist the Government with visibility into its environment. It is envisioned that this capability of a feed of its data would be integrated into a single pane of glass capability. A vendor’s proposal could recommend a capability to replace ArcSight.

5. Would NETCOM find value in a member of industry introducing a solution that accelerates HP ArcSight? If So, why?

A: The Government would welcome any recommended improvements to current technologies as long as the proposal also addresses the implementation of GEF and addresses the Government’s Statement of Objectives.

6. How will NETCOM reduce the amount of storage needed on the enterprise?

A: The Government is looking to industry to assist us in determining the right amount of storage and how to avoid storage bloat. The Government views storage as an enterprise asset that must be managed at the enterprise level.

7. Given the slow response times from current Event Management solutions in the industry, what is NETCOMs plan to accelerate these Security Management and Event Management solutions due to increasing cyber security concerns?

A: The Government would welcome any recommended improvements to current technologies as long as the proposal also addresses the implementation of GEF and addresses the Government’s Statement of Objectives.

8. Fiber Channel Arrays are inherently expensive. How is NETCOM going to drive costs down in the storage solution?

A: The Government would welcome any recommended improvements to current technologies as long as the proposal also addresses the implementation of GEF and addresses the Government’s Statement of Objectives.

9. Typically in large awards, one hardware vendor is chosen, what is the plan for utilizing existing storage assets in a heterogeneous environment?

A: The Government would welcome any recommended improvements to current technologies as long as the proposal also addresses the implementation of GEF and addresses the Government’s Statement of Objectives. The Government envisions that existing storage can be absorbed by the GEF as available capacity.

10. What is NETCOM's plan for accelerating Enterprise Workloads?

A: The Government would welcome any recommended improvements to current technologies as long as the proposal also addresses the implementation of GEF and addresses the Government’s Statement of Objectives.

11. Assuming NETCOM is looking at existing software solutions, what solutions are being considered to manage a heterogeneous environment?

A: The Government is looking to industry to help us understand what tools and technologies will be needed to manage a large heterogeneous environment.

12. How does NETCOM plan to accelerate application performance across the enterprise?

A: The Government would welcome any recommended improvements to current technologies as long as the proposal also addresses the implementation of GEF and addresses the Government’s Statement of Objectives.

13. Given that REST-based APIs are an industry standard, what is NETCOM's plan for a solution that incorporates REST-based APIs or a management framework?

A: The Government would welcome any recommended solutions in this area.

14. Given the availability of heterogeneous storage management solutions. How does NETCOM plan to integrate this type of software into the solution?

A: The Government would welcome any recommended solutions in this area.

15. Seeing that NETCOM will be providing the same solutions within each node, how does NETCOM plan to consolidate storage while increasing effective storage capacity?

A: The Government would welcome any recommended solutions in this area.

16. How does NETCOM plan to use server side (compute resources) to drive down backend storage costs while accelerating backend performance?

A: The Government would welcome any recommended solutions in this area.

17. Simultaneous support to the same filesystem by two different protocols typically introduces data corruption. Please clarify this requirement.

A: The requirement is for redundancy or clustering type of solutions however, the Government is open to other technologies that may exist to achieve this type of functionality.

18. Please provide some details on the Army's tools used to manage hypervisors.

A: The Government currently has Enterprise license agreements with both VMWare and Microsoft for this type of capability. The Government is open to alternative solutions.

19. With self-recovery of files by users being a requirement, is the VTL over traditional application driven tape backup architectures acceptable?

A: The Government would welcome any recommended solutions in this area.

20. What is the RPO/RTO associated with the different sites?

A: Your proposal should be based upon best business practices.

21. If a non-FC array is utilized which provides the same or even better performance characteristics, has similar features, identical connectivity options to the requirements, i.e. LPTA, would that be an acceptable alternative?

A: The Government would welcome any recommended solutions in this area.

22. We understand NETCOM envisioned the GEF computing enterprise services to cover three broad areas (i.e. Infrastructure as a Service, Network Services, and Computer Network Defense). As such, are there any associated separate contracts in place for these three areas? If so, who are the contractors, and what are the related contract numbers?

A: No, there are no separate contracts for these areas.

23. We understand the Government desires a flexible architecture that is adaptable for future technological advances. Would the Government consider establishing a narrow price range that would allow industry to propose innovative, creative, and effective solutions to best meet the SOO within that range?

A: The Government would welcome any recommended solutions in this area.

24. We understand the Government identified other aspects (e.g. business process, governance model, change management to include operators/user training and stakeholder engagement) that will impact achieving the SOO. Would the Government consider including Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) as a requirement that synchronizes with the contractor fabric solution as part of this procurement?

A: The Government would welcome any recommended solutions in this area.

25. We understand the Government intent to award this procurement as a single‐award. Would the Government consider including a sample task orders to challenge the prospective offerors to truly demonstrate their understanding and technical capabilities, and to allow the Government to hold them accountable to their solution during execution by making the sample task order an awardable CLIN to the single‐award contract?

A. Utilizing the aforementioned procurement concept will be determined by the Contracting Officer once the complete Acquisition Requirements Package (ARP) has been received from the Requiring Activity.

26. Industry Day presentation slide deck, GEF High-Level Overview - slide 7 Spectrum is listed within the DFMN, Regional Fabric, and Installation Fabric areas. Spectrum is also mentioned in Section 2.5 Summary of the Draft SOO. Would the Army please provide more details on Spectrum as it pertains to GEF?

A: Spectrum is a NETOPs tool that assist the Government with visibility into its environment. It is envisioned that this capability of a feed of its data would be integrated into a single pane of glass capability.

27. Industry Day presentation slide deck, GEF High-Level Overview - slide 7 To the right of the DFMN’s Centralized Management box, a Deployment box is shown with dashed arrows to the regional and installation fabrics. Does Deployment represent the capability for the DFMN to automate provisioning of service workloads to the regional and installation fabric nodes? If not, would the Army please clarify the intent of the Deployment capability?

A: The statement is correct. The Government envisions the automation of provisioning service workloads to the regional and installation fabric nodes via the DFMN.

28. Industry Day presentation slide deck, Phase 2, RFMN - Slide 13 A "subset" of System Center is noted in the Management Layer. Would the Army please identify the subset of SC capabilities expected at this layer?

A: The Government envisions this as part of a tiering of the System Center architecture however, specifics are unavailable at this time on what the actual “subset” will be.

29. Industry Day presentation slide deck, Phase 2, RFMN - Slide 13 Would the Army please elaborate on their expectations, objectives, and requirements of COOP/DR capabilities for the regional spokes (RFMN)?

A: We see this as a phase 3 requirement and we need to take in consideration JRSS for defining regional spoke capabilities. (Phase 3) Provides COOP/DR for file and data services from the supported regional spokes and failover RFMN.

30. Industry Day presentation slide deck, Question #5 of FRD Answers As a follow-on question to question #5 regarding the DOD DISA APL, would the Army please provide the most recent version of the Approved Product List?

A: The DISA APL can be found at http://www.disa.mil/network-services/ucco.

31. Does the Government want a new hardware agnostic software solution, or do they expect an engineered solution using available COTS/GOTS?

A: The Government would welcome any recommended solutions in this area.

32. When does the Government expect to release information related to type of acquisition strategy?

A: This information will be provided in the Solicitation; release date to be determined.

33. Will/when the Government be releasing information reference expected scope ($) of this effort.

A: This information will be provided in the Solicitation; release date to be determined.

34. As stated at Industry Day this effort does not include services. Under what contract entity (CNOSS?) will services for this capability be acquired?

A: This information will be provided in the Solicitation; release date to be determined.

35. Given the expanded partnership between DISA and NIAP, would NETCOM consider products evaluated under the NIAP Common Criteria Evaluation and Validation Scheme (CCEVS) instead of the DISA APL?

A: The Government would welcome any recommended solutions in this area.

36. Will NETCOM consider reciprocity with the APLs (e.g., Army IA APL) published by other sensitive or classified Government agencies?

A: The Government would welcome any recommended solutions in this area.

37. In the cluster requirements, NETCOM references Converged Network Adapters (CNA), but make references to both/either iSCSI and/or FCoE. Is there an architectural preference for one protocol over the other for block storage access?

A: No preference, the Government would welcome any recommended solutions in this area.

38. Will the Government consider issuing a Draft RFP requesting input from industry in order to ensure that the requirements, objectives and solicitation instructions are clarified before the final solicitation is published and thus reducing the time required for questions and answers during the solicitation process?

A. Issuing a Draft RFP will be determined by the Contracting Officer once the complete Acquisition Requirements Package (ARP) has been received from the Requiring Activity.

39. Will the Government consider a technical down select based on an established selection criteria and evaluation of the relevant past performance thus allowing the consideration of multiple options and reduction of technical risk?

A: The Government has no plans to select under technical down select method criteria.

40. Following a technical down select, will the Government consider an evaluation of an offeror’s proof of concept or demonstration of the technical solution by the down selected vendors (an acquisition technique known as a ‘fly‐off’) in order to ensure the technology solution meets the NETCOM requirements and eliminate technically non‐viable solutions?

A: The Government has not intend to use these types of evaluation criteria; see Solicitation Section M for further details on evaluation factors (Solicitation release date to be determined).

41. Following a proof of concept/technology demonstration ‘fly‐off’, will the Government consider a best and final pricing offer from vendors in order to ensure the best value at a competitive price for the Government?

A: Yes.

42. Will the Government consider adding the IPNs mentioned in the SOO and FRD as non‐funded CLINs on this contract in order to allow NETCOM to call forward the IPN infrastructure as the JRSS and other JIE initiatives are being implemented within the Army and reduce the time of implementation of the total solution by avoiding the lead time for another, separate acquisition cycle?

A: No, these will be treated as separate acquisitions.