Updated Request for Information for Commercially Available IT Management and Monitoring Tools for Use on U.S. Coast Guard IT Infrastructure
Request for Information for Commercially Available IT Management and Monitoring Tools for Use on U.S. Coast Guard IT Infrastructure
HSCG79-17-R-RFI0002
Disclaimer and Important Notes: This posting is a Request for Information (RFI) from interested vendors and is issued solely for informational and planning purposes. This posting is not a Request for Proposals or a Request for Quotations, and it is not considered to be a commitment by the Government to award a contract nor is the Government responsible for any costs incurred in furnishing information provided under this RFI. No basis for claim against the Government shall arise as a result from a response to this RFI or Government use of any information provided. Further, the Coast Guard is not at this time seeking proposals and will not accept unsolicited proposals. No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in your response to this RFI. The Government reserves the right to use any information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate, including using technical information provided by respondents in any resultant solicitation. Responses will assist the Government in determining the availability of potential solutions and commercial products in the market. At this time no solicitation exists; therefore, do Not Request a Copy of the Solicitation. It is the responsibility of the potential offerors to monitor this site for additional information pertaining to this requirement.
Requirement: The Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Coast Guard, Telecommunication and Information Systems Command (TISCOM) has a requirement to procure a new network monitoring, alerting, diagramming, and analysis tool(s). The tool(s) will monitor, and analyze over 1500 sites for 60,000 users across the 50 states, territories, and other international locations. Approximately 6,000 network devices will be monitored. The NAICS Code for this requirement is 541519 Other Computer Related Services. Devices that will be monitored, documented, diagrammed, and analyzed are, but not limited to:
• a variety of network switches and routers, mostly Cisco equipment,
• Time-of-Day GPS (NTP) servers (e.g. Symmetricom),
• Domain Name Servers (DNS) (e.g. Infoblox),
• Email Servers (e.g. Proofpoint)
• Firewalls (e.g. Palo Alto, Fortigate)
• Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems,
• Packet Capture devices,
• Load Balancers (e.g. F5),
• Environmental Monitoring devices (temperature, water detection),
• Other network support workstations and servers (Windows10 and Redhat Linux).
Proposed tool(s) must be able to use SNMPv3 polling and traps as well as SSH logins to monitor the state, condition, and configuration of network devices. Performance monitoring and trending must be able to display and graph past performance data and trends a minimum of 3 months in the past. Performance monitoring must be able to ingest network Flow in various formats and monitoring and alerting should ingest syslogs as well. The network diagramming tool must be able to produce readable diagrams in Visio and .pdf formats.
Performance degradation as scale increases is a serious concern as the Coast Guard network is geographically diverse with hundreds of devices only reachable via SATCOM. Responding vendors should be able to demonstrate success with their proposal on diverse networks in a similar size and configuration. A less than 5 minute update cycle is desirable with a maximum 10 minute cycle for all devices acceptable.
The Coast Guard recognizes that one tool may not optimally achieve monitoring, alerting, diagramming, and performance analysis. However, a minimum number of different tools is desired with some form of integration between proposed tools being desirable. No more than 3 separate tool sets should be proposed.
The users of the proposed tools will vary in skill and allowed access. Access to each tool(s) shall be customizable with integration to Window Active Directory for authorization being desirable. Any web access shall be https (TLS 1.1 or higher) and integration with DoD's CAC smartcards highly desirable.
The tool(s) proposed must allow for customization to the Coast Guard environment and data extraction via an API such as a RESTful interface is desirable.
Submission of Information: Interested parties are encouraged to submit a response which supports the company's claim that it presently has the products that provided the technology, performance, and functionality required to satisfy the requirements or submit a response which identifies areas in the system requirements that their company does not meet. The Coast Guard's requirement may be refined based on knowledge gained from RFI submissions. Specifically, any interested parties are requested to provide the following information:
1. Name of Company and DUNS number
2. Point of contact and phone number
3. Size of Business according to North American Industry Classification System
(NAICS) Code.
4. Positive statement of your interest in this procurement as a prime contractor
5. Description of your product(s) that might fill this requirement:
a. What type of products do you offer that might fill this requirement? (Describe system capabilities & performance, environmental specifications, physical dimensions, power requirements, and hardware requirements. Information regarding scalability of the system must be included.)
b. Do you offer these products commercially? (Is this item under a current GSA Schedule or do you currently have a contract for this product/service with any other Federal Agency?)
c. Do you offer a commercial product that could be modified to fulfill this need?
d. Do you believe there is a better method of fulfilling this requirement? If so, provide an alternative solution.
e. Do you offer quantity or other discounts to your customers?
f. What are your warranty terms, if any? What is your standard warranty practice? Can you offer an innovative warranty approach that would cover the lag time from delivery and the actual installation of the components?
g. Provide information for any additional charges for special packing and packaging?
h. Do you have a commercial catalog for a related group of products or services?
i. What is your average delivery lead time for this type of product?
j. Do you expect to offer a new product or service sometime in the future that might affect this requirement?
k. Do you provide spare part kits? (If so, can you identify the single points of failure and the price associated with these items)
l. Do you provide operation and maintenance training?
m. Provide a list of any proprietary data/components or embedded components for this product or data associated with this item.
n. Existing technical documentation and brochures are welcome as attachments as well as product catalogs and price lists.
o. Solutions/approaches not specifically conforming to the Coast Guard's current requirement may be submitted (i.e. Does your company have a better way of meeting our requirement?).
p. Provide information on prior Government and commercial purchases of the same type (pricing, performance, and customer satisfaction data)
q. Provide description of any built in test feature, a flow chart of the system analysis, and a list of the circuit card or assembly level bit resolution.
r. What is your commercial practice for Software and Hardware upgrades?
s. What is your commercial practice for Technical Support?
All comments/questions/concerns are encouraged and should be sent in writing to the Contract Specialist, Katherine Kearney, at Katherine.M.Kearney@uscg.mil. Upon receiving feedback, the Coast Guard will assess all input and its impact on the development of the final specifications.
Responses must be no longer than fifteen pages in length. Technical documentation and brochures, if included, do not count in the fifteen page maximum. Submit your response by 12:00 PM EST on August 28, 2017 to the Contract Specialist, Katherine Kearney, via email at Katherine.M.Kearney@uscg.mil. Any questions regarding this RFI may be referred to Ms. Kearney via e-mail.
Katherine Marie Kearney, Contract Specialist, Phone 7572952280, Email katherine.m.kearney@uscg.mil
