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IRM Data Center Services


Virginia, United States
Government : Federal
RFI
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U.S. Department of State/Bureau of Information Resource Management
IRM Data Center Services
Sources Sought Notice/Market Research SAQMMA17I0074

**Clarifications have been added based on questions received**  


Introduction

This is a Sources sought notice. This is not a solicitation and in no way commits the Government to award a contract. Furthermore, the receipt of this notice and or submission of a response confer no rights upon the vendor nor obligates the Government in any manner. This synopsis is encouraging responses from qualified and capable Small Businesses only. Responses from large business will not be reviewed. No phone calls related to this RFI will be accepted. All correspondence shall be via email.


The Department of State (DOS), Bureau of Information Resource Management (IRM) is performing market research to determine industry interest and capabilities for delivering a wide range of operations, maintenance, and platform engineering services.
Teaming is encouraged to ensure an effective solution. The respondent is encouraged to utilize small and disadvantaged businesses in its project team.
DOS/IRM welcomes responses submitted by small business Joint Ventures (JVs).
BASED ON THE RESPONSES TO THIS SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE/MARKET RESEARCH,
This requirement will be set aside for small business if at least two or more (Rule of Two) responsible small business concerns that are competitive in terms of market prices, quality, and delivery (FAR Subpart 19.502-2). Small businesses with socio-economic designations will be considered first (FAR Part19.203).


This Notice is organized into the following sections:
1.    Background
2.    Objectives and Scope of Services
3.    Instructions
4.    Closing Date
5.    Disclaimer


1. Background
The mission of DOS is to shape and sustain a peaceful, prosperous, just, and democratic world and foster conditions for stability and progress for the benefit of the American people and people everywhere. The mission of IRM is to rapidly and securely deliver anytime, anywhere, the knowledge resources and Information Technology (IT) services needed for the DOS' diplomatic team worldwide to accomplish the foreign affairs mission of the United States. IRM supports over 300 sites, and 275 missions worldwide. IRM supports both domestically and overseas deployed systems.
IRM requires the contractor to provide enterprise-level domestic data center service offerings, and administrative support services including a software-defined infrastructure, Data Center Information Management (DCIM), cloud and overseas virtual infrastructure (VI) support. IRM currently operates four (4) geographically disparate enterprise data centers that provide Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) for domestic bureau devices that are 60% customer owned and physical space that is 100% IRM-managed. IRM's data centers provide 24/7/365 on-site enterprise level one and two support for all customers. IRM supports Department of State (DOS) objectives by strategically developing and delivering enterprise data center infrastructure, servers, storage, and data center support services offerings. Benefits offered by the IRM program are higher system availability, data center scalability and sustainability, enhanced security, and improved cost containment for the DOS worldwide Information Technology (IT) infrastructure. Place of performance is Metro Washington District of Columbia (Primary), Culpeper, VA and Denver, CO. There are multiple incumbents who have different contract end dates. The majority of the requirements are not new but some are. The incumbents will not be named. There is no overseas travel anticipated. All support will be provided from the domestic team. IRM requires the prime contractor to hold a top secret facility clearance at the time of contract award and all billable personnel must hold a secret or top-secret clearance.


2. Objectives and Scope of Services
DOS is looking to standardize, harmonize, and enhance its mission-delivery capability in the IT service areas of Project Management, Application Development, and Operations and Maintenance (O&M) and seeks industry best practice solutions to achieve the following objectives:


1.    Increased Organizational Agility - Enabling the enterprise to evolve with changing federal mandates, regulations, policies, and business process needs.


2.    Reduced Service Delivery Time and Cost - Improve the productivity of DOS in performing application development, O&M, and infrastructure support. Improve the operations, while reducing the administrative burden through automation and by standardizing and streamlining processes.


3.    Improved Alignment between Business Stakeholders and IT - Integrate business stakeholders and IT planning/strategy efforts. Involve business stakeholders in IT solution design, by delivering solutions that are driven by business needs.


4.    Improved Cooperation and Coordination - Establish an application management framework that promotes "frictionless" cooperation and coordination between the various DOS service providers including separate groups that support the delivery of IT solutions.


5.    Standards Development and Adherence - Create internal standards for development and engineering that ensure consistency in solution creation, promote technology re-use and ensure the delivery of secure and maintainable systems.


6.    Innovation - Determine and develop best of breed processes using existing IRM processes as a starting point to sustain the above objectives and improve operational efficiency.
The scope of services will include:


1.    Operations and Maintenance Services:
a.    Project management services, including lifecycle management, planning, execution and closure


b.    Service delivery cooperation and coordination support, including service desk, network management and other contractor coordination support


c.    Contractor management services such as server, storage, mainframe, portfolio, architecture, account management, training, knowledge transfer, risk, compliance and other support


d.    Service design management support including defining, analyzing, planning, documenting, and recommending improvements for the availability of all IT infrastructure, processes, tools and roles


e.    Service transition management support, including transition planning, asset management, configuration, validation and testing, IT training and knowledge transfer and other support


f.    Service operation management support including Installs, Moves, Adds, Changes and Dispositions (IMACDs), incident problem management, technology performance management, backup and recovery, environmental services, facility, transportation and maintenance services, administration, documentation and other support


g.    IT security and compliance support for all services which the contractor has task order responsibility including the IT workstations, servers, hardware, software, network environments, data center and other IT systems as appropriate


h.    Project management reporting including project plans, project earned value, status reviews, progress reports, service level performance, monthly reports, reports for invoice reconciliation and other reporting when necessary


i.    Continual service improvement services including identifying and implementing improvements in the delivery of services, reviewing management information for trends, conducting internal audits, conducting customer surveys and performing Quality Assurance/Quality controls services


j.    Technical support services, including Tier 1 and Tier 2 service requests both domestically and overseas, entering tickets into an ITSM tool, classifying tickets accurately by criticality, escalating tickets to Tier 2 and Tier 3 subject matter experts, resolving Tier 1 tickets, completing tickets as defined by Service Level Agreements (SLAs), integrating with other service providers, and following Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)


2.    Platform Engineering Services:
a.    Program Office support including documentation, technical writing, collaboration and other support


b.    Service design support including service level management, capacity and availability management, and service continuity
c.    Service transition support including change, asset, configuration and knowledge management; operations support including system security


d.    Service improvement and engineering support including designing, building, testing and deploying product or service improvements to the existing services and systems; identifying strategies for improvement by defining metrics and gathering, processing, and analyzing data; and maintaining project documentation to support service improvement


e.    IT service delivery including Tier 1 and Tier 2 coordination and providing Tier 3 support in the areas of contractor responsibility


f.    Platform engineering support including converged infrastructure, cloud, and network engineering support for over 600 virtual hosts and over 4000 virtual machines including designing, testing, deploying, and identifying and resolving infrastructure issues


g.    Data protection engineering support including designing, testing, and deploying new and existing backup solutions; resolving issues for storage and virtual machine data protection; assisting with disaster recovery plans, and supporting customers in accordance with their data protection service levels


h.    Data center monitoring engineering support including monitoring website availability, disk usage, CPU consumption and utilization; developing custom monitoring scripts; providing server availability monitoring and system error monitoring; and providing application monitoring, utilization and consumption including system uptime and downtime


i.    Data center security infrastructure support including operations, maintenance, and coordination; support for Data at Rest Encryption (DARE); support for VM encryption; and support procuring the key licenses and managing the key control servers


j.    Special projects support including providing support to other DOS programs to evaluate and integrate new tools, systems, and data as they are identified; providing reporting services for these efforts when requested


3. Instructions:
Each submission shall contain both a cover letter and capabilities statement as outlined below in A and B.


A.    Cover Letter:
The Cover Letter shall be no more than 2 pages. Font should be Times New Roman, 12-point or larger. All page margins (excluding headers and footers) should be 1". The information contained in the cover letter at a minimum should include the following:


1.    Company information - Include company name, 2 points of contact and contact information (name, address, phone number, website URL, if available, email address, and fax number), Cage Code and DUNS Number.


2.    Company business size with socioeconomic classification based on North American Industry Classification (NAICS) Code 541611. Current Security Clearance level(s) held, if any, and Labor Category - Clearance Matrix.


3.    Teaming is encouraged to ensure an effective solution. The respondent is encouraged to utilize small and disadvantaged businesses in its project team. Please provide similar information for any team members (large and/or small) contemplated.


4.    DOS/IRM welcomes responses submitted by small business JVs.


5.    List GSA schedule and/or GWACs or IDIQs with corresponding schedule number/contract number.


6.    The subject line shall contain the phrase "IRM Data Center Services - SAQMMA17I0074"


B.    Capability Statement Requirements:
1.    The Request for Information (Capability Statement) response should be concise and focused and not exceed twenty (20) pages, in MSWord format, including cover pages, table of contents etc. Font should be Times New Roman, 12-point or larger. All page margins (excluding headers and footers) should be 1".


2.    If significant subcontracting or teaming is anticipated in order to deliver technical capability, organizations should address the administrative and management structure of such arrangements.


3.    Sale brochures, videos, and other marketing information materials are not solicited and will not be reviewed.


4.    Do not submit cost or price information with the response.


5.    A viable interested party shall demonstrate, in any capability statement submitted, the company's capabilities to meet the performance objectives and the customer's requirements. A viable interested party shall provide relevant, applicable examples of previous work or solution implementations, to include client points of contact.


6.    Market Research:
a.    A description of your corporate capabilities (history, similar experience, etc.) regarding both service areas.
b.    A description of where and how you have provided these services in the past. Within the page count described above, you may include as many examples as necessary to convey the breadth and depth of your corporate capabilities. Please include:
•    Client organization and point(s) of contact
•    Brief description of the scope of the work your company specifically performed and the results achieved
•    Contract and task order number
•    Contract type
•    Dollar value of services provided specifically by your company
•    Period of performance
•    State whether your company was a prime or sub-contractor


Questions and Submission Date: See Closing date for Electronic version of your response only in MSWord format to Paul Virostek, Senior Acquisition Consultant at VirostekP@state.gov. QUESTIONS SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS Questions must be submitted by 30 October 2017 at 1:00PM to the email address above.


4. Closing Date:
If your firm is capable of providing all of the service requirements described herein, then interested parties should submit an electronic copy of the completed submission package (Cover letter and Capabilities statement) in MSWord format via email.
Responses are due no later than 13 November 2017, 7:00 AM Eastern and directed to:


Paul Virostek
Senior Program Analyst
VirostekP@state.gov
Subject Line: IRM Data Center Services - SAQMMA17I0074


Tyler Sinclair
Contracting Officer
SinclairTE@state.gov
Subject Line: IRM Data Center Services - SAQMMA17I0074


5. Disclaimers:
The Government does not intend to award a contract(s) based on the submissions of this RFI, nor does it intend to pay for any costs incurred in response to this announcement. This RFI is solely intended for information and planning purposes and does not constitute a solicitation. Responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. The Department of State reserves the right to terminate this request and change its requirements if needed. Responding to this notice does not guarantee participation in future Department activities.
No phone calls related to this RFI will be accepted. All correspondence shall be via email. Please identify sources sought/RFI number in your email subject line.
This notice is issued solely for information and planning purposes and does not constitute a solicitation. All information received in response to this RFI marked PROPRIETARY will be handled accordingly. Responses to the RFI will not be returned.
This synopsis is encouraging responses from qualified and capable Small Businesses only. Responses from large business will not be reviewed.
The information obtained through this process is considered to be market research as described by FAR 2.101 and in accordance with FAR 10.002. Respondents will not be notified of the result of this market research.


Paul Virostek, Email virostekp@state.gov - Tyler Sinclair, Contracting Officer, Email SinclairTE@state.gov

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