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FBO DAILY ISSUE OF JUNE 27, 2012 FBO #3868
DOCUMENT

70 -- Intersystems Cache Enterprise Agreement - Attachment

Notice Date

6/25/2012
 

Notice Type

Attachment
 

NAICS

511210 — Software Publishers
 

Contracting Office

Department of Veterans Affairs;Technology Acquisition Center;260 Industrial Way West;Eatontown NJ 07724
 

ZIP Code

07724
 

Solicitation Number

VA11812R0472
 

Response Due

7/6/2012
 

Archive Date

10/13/2012
 

Point of Contact

Lana J Farber
 

E-Mail Address

0-9702<br
 

Small Business Set-Aside

N/A
 

Description

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is issuing a Request for Information to seek existing comprehensive integrated software solutions that can meet the requirements identified below. VA runs the largest integrated health care system in the nation, operating a hospital information system (HIS) called Veterans Integrated Software Technology Architecture (VistA). VistA is installed across VA's Medical Centers, VISN Data Centers, and Regional Data Centers on hundreds of servers supporting about 150,000 clinical and administrative users. VistA provides an Electronic Health Record the veterans in its care. VistA is written primarily in M (formerly MUMPS). VistA is comprised of over 100 distinct packages. These packages include: "CPRS - Computerized Patient Record System "Pharmacy "Surgery "Laboratory "Radiology "Spinal Cord "Scheduling "Enrollment "Fileman "HL7 "HealtheVet "VistA Imaging VA utilizes Cache' from Intersystems Corp as the database and M environment on which it implements VistA. VA currently acquires Software Updates and Technical Assurance (SUTA) for the Intersystems products currently owned. VA seeks to identify either an alternative integrated M database environment or offerors capable of providing SUTA for the currently owned products. VA also requires the ability to expand or contract licensing on a true-up/true-down basis. VA owns approx. 150,000 licenses for Cache', each covered under SUTA. As the enterprise changes, expansion of licenses may be required in the future. Therefore, the proposed solution must provide a means to acquire both additional licenses and SUTA. New licenses must be platform-independent. Conversely, VA demand may shrink, requiring the ability to decrease the number of licenses being covered under SUTA. VA has a large investment in Intersystems' Cache'. VA also has an extensive investment and experience with M programming. VA's desire is to assess the current marketplace to determine if alternatives exist that can replace Cache' as the M programming environment and underlying database. In other words, VA has an extensive base of M code and highly trained and experienced M programmers. The highly integrated nature of the VistA packages written in M does not make VistA a ready candidate to be replaced by another programming language. M is an interpretive language allowing executable code to be stored in variables with the ability to execute the variable. This functionality of M thereby eliminating the ability to use automated code translators to convert the VistA packages to another language as some of that code may be stored in the database. VA requires a solution where no coding changes to the existing VistA packages are required. Therefore, the proposed solution must be equal to or greater than that provided by Cache'. Key characteristics that must be provided in a replacement solution are: "Compliance with the current ANSI standard adopted for M (ISO/IEC 11756:1999) "SQL Integration - VA does not use SQL as the primary database engine but does use SQL to interact with other SQL-Based platforms. An integrated method of accessing SQL data is important in these cases. "ObjectScript - ObjectScript is a component of InterSystems' database product Caché. ObjectScript is the InterSystems' superset of the ANSI Standard M programming language. ObjectScript is used to support standalone solutions. VA uses ObjectScript as the object-oriented programming language to create object-oriented solutions. "Caché Objects - VA VistA Development is evolving the current code-base to an object-oriented platform which still utilizes the M-based coding and data storage systems. Integrated Object ability is important for these efforts. "iKnow Technology - There are plans in place to implement iKnow technology for mining and analyzing data in free-text fields that are abundantly present in VistA Data. "CSP Technology - VA has a base of, and is moving forward with, online web-based presentation-layer projects. CSP is required for this. "Disaster Recovery and High Availability - VA has implemented Cache' redundancy technologies at several critical data centers in the country. This allows for more rapid failover of data centers with virtually no data loss and only momentary pauses in operation. This is a critical component of our operations data protection. Alternatively, VA seeks to identify companies that can provide SUTA for the existing install base as well as provide expansion/contraction capabilities. The proposed solution must be equal to or greater than that provided by Intersystem. That is, VA requires the capabilities to support the currently owned Intersystems products all the way to the engineering level. Because of VA's extensive use of Cache', VA routinely requires engineering support and assistance from Intersystem at tier 3. This tier 3 support has often resulted in changes being incorporated into the Intersystems product. Any support or changes made as part of this offer must not void any licensing or warrantees associated with the products owned. VA currently has and wishes to continue to have access to Intersystem source code and the utilities that comprise the Cache' System. VA applications continuously call into the Cache' technology to send and receive data through a robust set of API's(application programming interface). In response to this RFI, please address the following (you may respond to one or both): 1)Replacement of the Intersystems M environment with an alternate M environment a.Describe in detail how your proposed offering will meet or exceed the capabilities of the current Cache' implementations. b.Provide estimated costs for acquiring and implementing your solution to support 150,000 users across VA at over 150 hospitals and hundreds of clinics. Cost must include hardware, software, and training of 3,000 IT professionals (existing hardware cannot be reused.) c.Provide annual cost estimates for maintenance of all aspects of the proposed solution for a period of 5 years. d.Provide a description of how you would implement such a solution, including testing of existing applications to ensure the new solution does not introduce problems with VistA. 2)Provision of SUTA for the existing installed base a.Describe how you will provide SUTA, including the capability to assess and correct engineering problems that require changes to the Intersystems products. Responses shall be submitted via email to contract specialist Lana Farber at lana.farber@va.gov no later than 3PM EDT on July 6, 2012.
 

Web Link

FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/notices/35e874d56df9e7a7e2caa7eedaa3b96f)
 

Document(s)

Attachment
 

File Name: VA118-12-R-0472 VA118-12-R-0472.doc (https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=380741&FileName=VA118-12-R-0472-000.doc)

Link: https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=380741&FileName=VA118-12-R-0472-000.doc

 

Note: If links are broken, refer to Point of Contact above or contact the FBO Help Desk at 877-472-3779.
 

Record

SN02785393-W 20120627/120625235337-35e874d56df9e7a7e2caa7eedaa3b96f (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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