Army Virtualization Software, Solutions, and Migration

1.    Lead in Statement:  
This is a Request for Information (RFI) (hereinafter Notice). This is NOT a solicitation for proposals, proposal abstracts, request for bids or quotations, nor a promise to issue a solicitation in the future. The purpose of this RFI is for the Government to obtain knowledge and information for project planning purposes only. The Government may schedule one-on-one sessions with industry respondents.    

2.    Detail Statements:
The Army is familiar with the virtualization and complimentary capabilities provided by VMware by Broadcom and requires the commercial marketplace’s feedback on their ability to provide all virtualization and complimentary capabilities (software, solutions, services) including migration processes and timelines. Companies must provide plans of action to ensure their most updated virtualization and complimentary capabilities will fit the Army’s unique use cases, including disconnected and contested environments, that support military operations and national security across both unclassified and classified networks worldwide. Equally important is the ability to provide U.S. Based Support and Data Centers as needed, as required by the Federal Government. 
    
3.      Requested Information:
Responses to this Notice should include the following:

A.    Direct Response Related to Migration (Company’s Familiar with Army Requirements and Environments.
       i.    Describe your ability to migrate existing Hosts and Virtual Machines to your product's environment.
             a.    Specify if there is an ability to migrate one environment over another quicker. 
       ii.    White papers that address corporate expertise and qualifications with providing commercially available virtualization software, solutions, and services.    
             a.    Army may require approximately 525k enterprise and 417k tactical/edge cores.  
       iii.    Provide pricing catalogs by product number / capability, any other typical costs associated with your products.
       iv.    Hardware requirements, commercial availability, authorized resellers, Distributor (sole letter of supply or multiple distributors), GWACS /Federal contract vehicles for obtaining the product/service.
       v.    Note any tools, requirements, general implementation guidelines, special assessments, timeframes, reference documents or guides related to migration of small or large scall environments from existing virtualization providers across multiple classifications worldwide. 

B.    Additional Information Required for Companies Not Familiar with the Army Requirements and Environments.
        i.    What software licensing models do you currently support (i.e. term, perpetual, subscription, etc.)?  
       ii.    If perpetual licensing, is your company amenable to continue providing perpetual offerings to the Army. Is there a timeline for retiring perpetual, maintenance and support?  Please provide your details and timeline. 
      iii.    Address security updates, patches and support for beyond end of life or sale of software.   
      iv.    Describe and provide specifics related to hardware requirements for your product.
      v.    Confirm software warranty is aligned to standard contractual periods of performance.
     vi.    Describe your software distribution approach for customers with and without persistent and reliable internet connectivity.  
    vii.    Describe your software distribution approach for version upgrades and security patches for customers with and without persistent and reliable internet connectivity.   
   viii.    Describe how your company’s solutions can support the Army’s unique and enduring use cases to support global military operations, to include in contested environments.  
    ix.    Describe how your software supports and integrates virtualization across multiple geographically dispersed data centers  and how it supports hybrid cloud and on-premises deployments. Include integration considerations with native cloud capabilities and with multiple Cloud Service Providers. 
     x.    Can your company provide a Supply Risk Management Framework Plan?
    xi.    DoD Cloud Security Reference Guide, Federal Risk Authorization Management Program and National Institute of Standards and Technology authorizations. Identify the cybersecurity compliance and authorizations currently in place for your software, solutions, and services. 
           a.    Can your company provide a Cyber Security Risk Mitigation Plan?    
           b.    Include security considerations, ensuring to address the extent to which the hypervisor provides isolation and segregation of processes and data.
   xii.    Describe how your hypervisor software provides and manages virtual machines; address how it shares and exposes physical components (include CPU, memory, storage, networking, and other resources) to the guest operating systems. 
  xiii.    In addition, describe how your software manages container runtime environments. 
  xiv.    Describe how the hypervisor integrates multiple physical machines to provide shared resources; address the efficiency of provisioning resourcing, the management of resource pools, and the ability to migrate virtual machines across physical hosts.
  xv.    Describe the ability of your software to provide the following: high availability, data center fail over and recovery, live migration, checkpointing.
 xvi.    Identify the guest operating systems which are supported. Describe other emulation software and virtualization supported (e.g. network virtualization).
 xvii.    Describe the user interface, training requirements, and administration necessary to manage the virtualization software; describe other supporting and complimentary software components. 
 xviii.    Identify contract vehicles, including Government Wide Acquisition Contracts and Federal Supply Schedules that would support this possible requirement.
            a.    Identify any GWAC contract(s) your company is a prime contractor for that has the scope aligned with description in Section A.  
            b.    Subcontracting possibilities, specifically for small businesses. How many resellers do you partner with?
            c.    Does your company have a single distributor (ex: letter of supply to one company)?
            d.    Identify Government Furnished Information needed on the current Army computing environments, networks and software licensing inventory.  

C.    Information Required by All Respondents
       i.    Respondent’s UEI number, CAGE code, organization name, address, points of contact by role, type of business (large or small) and socio-economic status (e.g., 8(a), HUBZone, etc) pursuant to the applicable NAICS code.

      ii.    Respondent’s technical and administrative points of contact, including names, titles, addresses, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail addresses.

     iii.    Leadership POCs, emails and phone numbers.

     iv.    Indicate your company ability to quickly follow-up with the Army regarding migration and environment landscape.    

4. How to submit a response.
The point of contact for this Notice is: Ms. Karen B Leahy, karen.b.leahy.civ@army.mil, and Mr. Jon Smith, jon.e.smith8.civ@army.mil

Email responses to this Notice shall be sent to the attention of individual(s) listed in this Notice.  

Responses are required no later than 15 business days after RFI release date.  Earlier responses are appreciated.

Terms and Conditions regarding this Notice:
This Notice does not oblige the Government to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in response.  All costs associated with responding to this Notice are solely at the responding party's expense.  The Government reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate.  Further, the Government may contact the vendor for additional information regarding the information submitted as part of this market research effort.  Any organization responding to this notice should ensure that its response is complete and sufficiently detailed to allow the Government to determine the organization’s qualifications to perform the work.  Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted.  After a review of the responses received, a pre-solicitation synopsis and solicitation may be published in Government Point of Entry or other similar source (e.g. GSA E-buy).  However, responses to this notice will not be considered adequate responses to a solicitation.

Responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract or agreement.  The Government will not be obligated to pursue any particular acquisition alternative as a result of this notice.  Responses to the notice will not be returned.  Not responding to this notice does not preclude participation in any future solicitation if one is issued.

No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in responses to this Notice, unless otherwise appropriately marked by the Respondent.  The Government reserves the right to use any non-proprietary technical information received in response to this Notice in any resultant solicitation(s).  

Do Not Submit any Proposals/Offers in response to this Notice.

Place of Contract Performance:  Contractor site