GSA intends to procure via the NASA Scientific Engineering Workstation Procurement (SEWP) III contracts two SOLARIS based Sun Fire 25K, 8 CPU, 16 GB mid range configured computer systems, additional quantities of Sun-branded Hitachi 9990 configured Storage Area Network arrays, approximately 150-hours of Sun client solutions professional services, and additional Seibel software licenses and maintenance. All of these items are for acquisition on a specific make and model and all-or-none basis through the NASA SEWP III contracts. The items and services procured by GSA are on behalf of the client, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to support their agency-wide major applications standardization program migration which standardized on SOLARIS based systems. The rationale GSA approved is provided here as required by FAR Part 5.201 (a )(6) when authority for the acquisition is under FAR Part 6.302-1(c ) specific make and model or name brand when no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements. 41 U.S.C. 253(c)(1). That is, before going to SEWP III per their ordering instructions CMS is justifying its actions beforehand, as in past phases, but now with notice. This is Phase 6 of a multi-phase standardization program-plan-approach where previous phases completed over the past 36-months are all similarly justified. BACKGROUND: HHS CMS is the largest insurance company in the world. CMS expends $500 billion annually providing for more than 80 million beneficiaries while processing 1 billion claims annually. CMS manages more than 1/3 of the nations healthcare expenditures, which amount to 5% of the Nations GDP. In an effort to streamline the CMS Information Technology Services, CMS is striving to implement IT standards that will reduce overall IT costs and reduce the number of systems that it manages on a daily basis. The Information Technology Modernization Group (ITMG) is responsible for the implementation of many of these standards, and to this end ITMG is committed to provide hardware, software, policies, and procedures that are standardized on proven technology and industry best practices. CMS has standardized through the publication of major architecture documents such as the Internet Architecture, Web-Enabled Application Architecture, Enterprise Messaging Architecture, and Application Developers Guide. Through the use of these documents, policies, and industry best practices, CMS standardization on these architectures commenced some 30 months ago where a significant number of present CMS applications are now fully operational under this standard. Standards, however, are only as good as the policies and procedures that back them up, and thus some specific requirements developed are to ensure that hardware and software meet these standards. CMS has instituted a policy that Sun Solaris will be the Operating System standard for future business application development on the mid tier using J2EE. Thus, one of the major Operating System specifications that is now part of the CMS Target Architecture is Sun Solaris running on Sun Microsystems Servers. As part of this Target Architecture, CMS has identified Hitachi, SUN SAN as the SAN and Storage Management hardware for the Mid-Tier Environment. The CMS Target Architecture can be found at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/SystemLifecycleFramework/Downloads/TargetArchitecture.pdf The Solaris architecture is currently within the Agencys Technical Reference Model (TRM). Solaris is a proven technology in the IT industry. This combined with the performance of Sun Microsystems hardware, Java software services, and published policies and procedures governing Application Development, places CMS in a substantially higher quadrant for success in our business application area than ever before. CMS has made the decision to use the Solaris operating system as the standard for the Agencys defined Three Zone Architecture. The Internet Architecture (Three Zone Architecture) in summary is - The Architecture for the CMS Internet platform is a three zone architecture with each zone separated by firewalls to support web application systems. The first or outermost zone supports web servers only and is called the Presentation Region or De-Militarized Zone (DMZ). The second or middle zone supports only business logic for the applications and is called the Application Region. The third or innermost zone, called the Secure Region or Protected Region, contains the database servers used by the web applications. Additional network segments will exist to support specialized network services such as Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), Domain Naming Services (DNS), etc. The full publication describing the approved CMS Internet Architecture can be found at: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/SystemLifecycleFramework/Downloads/InternetArchitecture.pdf Other CMS approved standards documents include: J2EE Application Developers Guide as of November 5, 2004 found at: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/SystemLifecycleFramework/Downloads/J2EEApplicationDevelopmentGuidelines.pdf Siebel 7.7 Guidelines as of March 3, 2006 found at: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/SystemLifecycleFramework/Downloads/Siebel77Guidelines.pdf Target Architecture as of September 2004 found at: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/SystemLifecycleFramework/Downloads/TargetArchitecture.pdf A complete list of CMS Standard Documents including the above are found at: http://www.cms.hhs.gov/SystemLifecycleFramework/09_Standards.asp#TopOfPage The use of such name brand descriptions in the acquisition is essential to the Governments requirements, thereby precluding consideration of a product brand of another manufacturer because: CMS has standardized on [SOLARIS based] Sun Microsystems Hardware and Sun Branded Hitachi Storage Arrays to provide a consistent hardware platform that CMSs developers understand and can develop systems on thus providing a full systems life cycle environment in which Medicare and Medicaid Business Applications run. A change in this environment through the use of other non-Sun Microsystems hardware would impose additional risk and potential cost impacts to the Medicare and Medicaid Programs. The additional risks to these programs would place CMS in a delicate balance between meeting legislative mandates for these programs and FAR requirements for other than full and open competition for non-brand specific hardware and software. CMS has invested considerable training dollars and staff hours understanding the Internet Architecture hardware to adequately support this environment. Additionally, the potential for cost impacts are high due to time and effort to evaluate and integrate this hardware into the Internet Architecture and identifying the minor differences in implementation of non-Sun Microsystems hardware and software and that of CMS Internet Architecture hardware based on Sun Microsystems enterprise and mid range servers. This notice affords adequate opportunity for relevant and timely inquiries to the CO on factual disagreements supported by substantive information and is not intended to result in offers although the client SOW and Price Tables are included for information purposes only. It is instead as full disclosure of the intent to go to SEWP III to make the buy under the most favorable conditions feasible all factors considered, understanding the above explanation of the HHS CMS Systems Standards Program. Client agency intends continuing their three-tier internet SOLARIS based systems standard until they are convinced, separate and apart from this acquisition of the validity and cost effectiveness of any other recommended approach. Should there be questions or concerns these must be in writing and sufficiently detailed. Send these to the GSA Contracting Officer at e-mail address
[email protected] with a copy to
[email protected] . The alternate CO, Howard Parker need not receive a copy as he will only be involved in this matter if for some reason I am no longer available to complete the action. Thank you for your continued interest in GSA procurement activities.