Loren Data's SAM Daily™

FBO DAILY ISSUE OF DECEMBER 04, 2003 FBO #0737
SOURCES SOUGHT

D -- Solicit information from potential sources of industry that will assist the United States Army in formulating a best value approach for outsourcing of the enterprise web farm, web development, and web application support.

Notice Date

12/2/2003
 

Notice Type

Sources Sought
 

Contracting Office

US Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity, ATTN: MCMR-AAA, 820 Chandler Street, Frederick, MD 21702-5014
 

ZIP Code

21702-5014
 

Solicitation Number

W81XWH-04-U-0336
 

Response Due

1/25/2004
 

Archive Date

3/25/2004
 

Point of Contact

James Butler, 301-619-7434
 

E-Mail Address

Email your questions to US Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity
(james.butler@det.amedd.army.mil)
 

Small Business Set-Aside

N/A
 

Description

NA It is the government's intent to use the gathered information initially for cost, schedule, and feasibility planning and potentially for the basis of a future contract/delivery order. The intent of this RFI is to determine the most cost effective way to co nsolidate web development and hosting services into a single location without loss of functionality or compatibility. This document is formatted with a section identifying some of the key questions the government is seeking industry??????s feedback concerning. After the questions, (see attachment) we define the scope of the project as we see it. Next, the document revie ws the constraints that affect this project. The additional detail is there to answer your questions so that industry can identify solutions that will meet our needs within the constraints of the associate policies. This RFI is for planning purposes only and shall not be construed as a request for proposal (RFP) or as an obligation on the part of the Government to acquire any products or services. The Government does not intend to award a contract on the basis of thi s RFI or otherwise pay for the information solicited. No entitlement to payment of direct or indirect costs or charges by the Government will arise as a result of submission of responses to this RFI and the Government's use of such information. Respondent s of this RFI may be requested to provide additional information/details based on their initial submittals. The following questions are posed: 1. How does industry recommend that the Government outsource the setup of a scalable enterprise web farm within the .mil domain? 2. What are some industry best practices for outsourcing web hosting, development, and application support? 3. Does industry have suggestions for where the Government should host the enterprise web farm? The site must be able to meet the DoD requirements for supporting a .mil network connection. 4. Does your company already have a high-speed .mil network connection? 5. Does your company have experience in providing web hosting in a .mil environment? 5.1. If so, please provide information related to your firm's experience in implementing and supporting web hosting and web based development. 5.2. Also, provide references (URLs) to a sample of the publicly available web sites that your organization designed and hosts. 6. Does your company have experience managing systems in compliance with DoD/Army standards? 6.1. If yes, please provide references for some of the DoD sites that your organization has managed. 7. Does your company have any quality related certifications such as SEI??????s CMMI, Six Sigma, or ISO9000? 8. What tools does your company recommend for enabling personnel inexperienced with web development to effectively and efficiently manage web site content? 9. What type of architecture (logical/physical) would your company recommend for implementing a scalable enterprise web farm? 10. What are the industry standards for software escrow when outsourcing web development? 11. What are the industry standards for service level agreements (SLA) metrics associated with outsourcing hosting and development activities? 11.1. What are the industry standards for incentivizing outsourcing companies to meet the SLA requirements? Include both positive and negative incentive methodologies. 12. What are the industry standards for transaction response times for web based applications? 12.1. How are response-time measurements typically taken and reported? 12.2. What percentage of time should a user expect to see the industry standard response time within? e.g., a user will receive screen updates within 2 seconds of submitting the request, for 90% of the requests made. 13. The government is interested in knowing the industry standards for support response times associated with tiered priority levels. Assuming the following priority levels and descrip tions, please answer questions 13.1 thru 13.4: Priority Description 1 The site or server is down: 2 Site or Service is seriously degraded, but it can continue operation Major Service is lost by a single or small number of users Ordinary Problem or incident where single users can operate some of the system activities, but there are definite problems New Requests Any calls from single users or groups that are requesting a new service 13.1. How quickly should you receive a call back from the support technician? 13.2. What is a reasonable time to expect the support technician to be on-site and ready to begin repairs? 13.3. How quickly should the repairs be completed? 13.4. How frequently should the site be given follow-up communications as to the status of problems that remain unresolved? 14. Change request completion times. The government is seeking industry feedback on ??????generally accepted?????? completion times for change requests such as: access control changes, small web content changes, small/simple web site development, and medi um web site development. 15. What are some of the typical exit strategies associated with outsourcing of web hosting and development services? 16. What would be the incremental cost for providing a web site monitoring service that would provide proactive monitoring of not only server problems, but also web site availability monitoring? 16.1. What would the cost be for having the monitoring service available during normal business hours vs. the cost of providing the monitoring and proactive notification on a 24x7x365 basis? 17. What tool(s) does industry recommend for empowering web site owners (people using the hosting service) to manager their web space? Key concerns in this area would be security and ease of use. 18. What tools does your company recommend for enabling personnel inexperienced with web development to effectively and efficiently manage web site content? 19. What tool(s) does your company use to perform web based application monitoring and testing (functional, regression, and load testing)? 20. What is the industry seeing as the advantages (cost and otherwise) that is typically achieved by consolidating an organizations web hosting? For example?????? ??????The consolidation of web hosting typically results in an xx% cost savings over having individual departments and locations each managing their own web hosting. Additionally, there is an x% improvement in the organizations security posture.?????? 21. The government is interested in hearing industries recommendations for implementing a change control process for the web farm that would ensure that a customer making changes to one web site would not significantly impact the performance of the other w eb sites. 22. What are some industry standards for costing models associated with outsourcing web hosting, development, and support? 23. What are typical the typical costs for web development services (broken down by the type of service and level of skill set required to perform it). It is expected that these services will be provided by the hosting agency, and used predominately for w eb page updates and small to medium sized development projects. 24. Provide a cost break out of an order of magnitude estimate with a five-year life-cycle cost for implementing and maintaining the recommended solution. 25. When identifying costs for the recommended solution assume that systems are expected to be available on a 24x7x365 basis. System Operational Availability shall be measured in terms of the percentage of time that the system??????s end users are able to access and use the functionality of the application software from their individual workstations. When estimating costs please provide break point estimates that show the cost for 99%, 99.9% and 99.99% uptime within the specified periods. 26. What is the realistic schedule for implementing a project such as this ( see remainder of the document for scope)?
 

Place of Performance

Address: US Army Medical Research Acquisition Activity ATTN: MCMR-AAA-B, 820 Chandler Street Frederick MD

Zip Code: 21702-5014

Country: US
 

Record

SN00479764-W 20031204/031202212249 (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

FedBizOpps.gov Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)

---

| FSG Index  |  This Issue's Index  |  Today's FBO Daily Index Page |