THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION ONLY. It is NOT a Request for Proposal, a Request for Quotation, an Invitation for Bids, a Solicitation, or an indication that DHA will contract for these services contained in this RFI. This RFI is part of a Government market research effort to determine the scope of industry capabilities and interest and will be treated as information only. In accordance with FAR 15.201(e), responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. Responses to this RFI are strictly voluntary and the Government will not pay respondents for information provided in response to this RFI. Responses to this RFI will not be returned and respondents will not be notified of the result of the review. If a Solicitation is issued, it will be announced on the SAM.gov website https://sam.gov/ at a later date and all interested parties must respond to that Solicitation announcement separately from any response to this announcement. This RFI does not restrict the Government’s acquisition approach on a future Solicitation. Description: The Defense Health Agency (DHA) is issuing this Request for Information (RFI) HT0050-21-RFI-0104 as a means of conducting market research to identify resources and capability to provide Compute and Storage Management Service (CSMS) platform refresh for DHA Military Treatment Facilities (MTFs) and other organizations within the DHA. The purpose of this RFI is to request replacement solutions from industry for the upcoming hardware refresh of the CSMS platform. The procurement process is anticipated to begin in Government Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 and continued in FY 2023 and 2024 with deployments in FY 2023, 2024, and 2025. The Government is contemplating awarding a competitive non-personal services contract to perform in accordance with the capabilities and technicalities listed below Background: The Defense Health Agency maintains a Compute Storage and Management Service (CSMS) in approximately 200 locations worldwide. Eighteen (18) of these are in Regional datacenters and are commonly referred to as Military Health System (MHS) Application Access Gateways (MAAG) sites. The CSMS platform consists of a hypervisor (VMWARE), compute (HPE blades, Dell/Cisco rackmounts), storage (Dell Unity, Netapp FAS/AFF, vSAN), departmental and user file shares (CIFS), and backup software (CommVault). The MAAG locations provide a regional architecture for offsite backups. The entire CSMS infrastructure is managed and supported by DHA sustainment services centrally located out of Charleston, South Carolina. The CSMS platform provides Infrastructure as a Services (IaaS) for enterprise services such as Active Directory (AD), patch management, antivirus updates, security scanning, and logging services. In addition, CSMS provides IaaS services for local workloads and is designed to be the primary virtual hosting platform funded by DHA. The CSMS infrastructure is due for a technology refresh beginning in 2023 and continuing through 2025. Hardware and support services to execute the technology refresh are expected to be purchased in the government fiscal years 2022, 2023, and 2024 with the deployment of purchased hardware and support services to occur in 2023, 2024, and 2025. Instruction for Submission of Response: The Government desires that respondents offer their experience and recommendations on the following questions. When Answering Questions Please cite the Section and question you are answering; i.e. A. 2.2.1. Responses should include the following information: Vendor: A. Describe your service approach in your response: End of Sales and Warranty: What are the end of sale dates for each of the products in the response? What are the standard factory and OEM extended warranty options provided with your solution? Installation: What levels of support do you offer with the installation, configuration, and provisioning of the technical solution? How do you ensure compliance with any relevant DoD STIG requirements? What is your process for certifying the installation prior to data migration or cut over from the previous system? Training: Describe your training approach. International Support: In which countries is warranty support available 7 days x 24 hours x 4 hours x 5 years? Are warranties country-specific? On-site technician availability? Are all support phone calls answered by U.S. Nationals? If hardware is not in US does the support center arrange repair? Or does DHA have to call foreign help desk? If a device requires servicing by a third party, will the vendor be responsible for risks associated with that third-party? CONUS Support: Is warranty support available 7 days x 24 hours x 4 hours x 5 years? On-site technician availability? Are all support phone calls answered by U.S. Nationals? Is there a direct Federal phone number for support? If a device requires servicing by a third party, will the vendor be responsible for risks associated with that third-party? B. Describe contract related questions in your response Provide a capability statement that includes, as a minimum, the following information: company’s name and address, point of contact, cage code, phone number, fax number, e-mail address, and business size as it relates to NAICS 541519, Other Computer Related Services Tailored capability statements addressing the particulars of this effort, with appropriate documentation supporting claims of technical, organizational, and staff capability. Inform the Government if these services are offered on existing contracts (e.g., GSA, NETCENTS, CHESS, SEWP IV, etc.). If so, please provide the contract number and where to find more information about the contract. What risks or concerns do you have with the Government’s requested capabilities and technical requirements and what are your suggested mitigation strategies? Is there a particular Contract Line Item Number (CLIN) structure that is preferred (i.e., labor hour, firm-fixed price, cost, etc.)? If so, please explain. Are there standard commercial rates for these services? Can prices be firm fixed? Are there any innovative approaches used by your company for these types of services? If so, please explain. If interested in competing for this requirement, would you be proposing as a prime contractor or subcontractor, or any other teaming arrangement) (e.g., joint venture)? What makes your company a market leader for these types of services? How relevant is your past performance concerning this requirement? Please provide examples of similar contracts to include contract numbers, dollar values, complexity and magnitude. What is the business size standard of your company (small business, SDB, SDVOSB, HUBZone, 8(a), Large, etc.)? If 8(a) eligible, please provide your current status regarding your scheduled graduation date from the 8(a) program under this NAICS code. Is 45-60 days sufficient time for you to prepare and submit your proposal using tradeoff source selection procedures (e.g., submittal of technical, past performance, and price proposals)? If not, what is a reasonable time? Discuss any concerns, comments, or recommendations you may have with the capability and technical requirements. Give specific paragraph numbers for reference. C. Administrative Details White Paper - Please limit response to no more than 10 pages for technical/service approach and 2 pages for contract related questions. Submit any comments/questions regarding the capability and technical requirement description. Comments/questions regarding the capability and technical requirement description are optional and does not count towards page limit. If response, include the section and question you are answering with each comment/question; i.e. A. 2.2.1. Submit a response to this RFI by CLOSING 6 July 2021 at 3:00 PM (local time in San Antonio, Texas). All responses and any questions under this RFI must be emailed to Ms. Dawn Windham, E-mail:
[email protected] and Dr. Jerome Watkins, Email:
[email protected]. The Subject line of the email must read “(Type Here Business Name) – Response to Request for Information (RFI) HT0050-21-RFI-0104 - DHA Compute and Storage Management Service (CSMS) platform Refresh No Solicitation or Marketing Materials shall be submitted. Any response submitted for this RFI constitutes consent for that submission to be reviewed by military personnel, Government civilians, and associated contracting/acquisition support contractors. DHA will not provide feedback to any information submitted. Submissions to this RFI will not be returned to sender. Telephone inquiries will not be accepted or acknowledged, and no feedback or evaluations will be provided to companies regarding their submissions.