Mainframe-as-a-Service

The proposed requirement is to provide Mainframe-as-a-Service (MFaaS). CBP’s current mainframe infrastructure is operating in IBM’s proprietary hardware and software that cannot be reasonably migrated to another platform or vendor without a multi-year effort. The current products directly support mission critical applications, specifically collections. Efforts are underway to refactor the collections application and then transition to a distributed platform but the refactoring efforts and migration are several yeas from completion. The use of anything other than an IBM brand mainframe product and associated software set has been deemed non-viable by OIT. Discussions with the vendor community and developers throughout OIT have revealed that the use of other products would be a multi-year effort to convert billions of rows of data and re-write millions of lines of application code and security profiles. Efforts to move to another mainframe product set would be a duplication of time and cost since the migration to a different platform using distributed systems is already underway.

Further supporting a smooth transition and continuity of support, IBM has over 20 years of institutional knowledge of CBP functions which made migrating NDC Mainframe to the Research Triangle Park Facility seamless. IBM maintains the CBP Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) Disaster Recovery site at the same facility which would allow ease of access for information transfer should the ACE DR system be needed.

Awarded contract HHSN316201200030W to unknown vendor for unknown amount on 2021-01-28.