Distributed Scheduler RFP

The purpose of this RFP is to solicit Proposals for licensing and transition support services for a distributed workload scheduler or orchestration system (Solution). If there is a need for technical support during your proposal submission in the last 48 hours prior to the submissions, contact +1 (555) 000-0000. This number is for OhioBuys solicitation technical questions only; there will not be any questions answered regarding the solicitation. A couple items of note : Chrome is the preferred browser for OhioBuys. Only have a single window open that is logged into OhioBuys, having multiple windows opened to a single user can create an error, especially when trying to submit your proposal.
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Computer services
Inquiries Inquiry 97688 | 1. The RFP lists Windows Server 2022 and 2025, RHEL 9.4, and AIX 7.3 as supported OS targets. Will the State consider proposals where the IWA server tier runs on RHEL 9.4 while agent components are deployed to Windows and AIX hosts, or must the primary server tier itself support all three OS options?2. For the HA requirement, will the State accept an Active Passive configuration with automatic failover, for example a switchover under 60 seconds, or is Active Active with load balanced simultaneous processing required?3. Does the State have a preferred hypervisor or container platform, such as VMware vSphere, Red Hat OpenShift, or bare metal, for the on premise deployment? Are containerized OCI compatible deployments acceptable?4. How many distinct Agencies are expected to onboard at contract start? Is each non production environment expected to be a full separate IWA instance, or is a logical tenant or partition within a shared instance acceptable?5. Will the State provide dedicated server hardware, or must the Contractor specify server requirements? The RFP prohibits hardware purchases under the contract — please confirm whether State-furnished servers are assumed and whether a minimum server specification document is available.6. Requirement J.8 mandates native JCL execution on z or OS mainframe. Please confirm the number of z or OS LPARs or sysplexes in scope, the z or OS versions currently running, and whether a z or OS agent is already licensed or must be included in the proposal cost.7. Requirement J.3 requires cross-platform job dependencies configurable for a minimum of 35 days. Are the existing global conditions primarily between z/OS and distributed jobs, or also between distributed jobs only? What is the approximate number of active global conditions?8. Does the State require the solution to submit JCL jobs directly to the JES spool through a z or OS resident agent, or is a secure file transfer based submission to JES acceptable as an alternative method?9. What is the total approximate number of active job definitions currently managed in BMC Control-M across all Agencies? What is the current maximum daily production task execution volume (used to determine the banded pricing tier)?10. Requirement B.2 states the solution must ingest job definitions from the Control M structured export format for initial migration. Can the State provide a sample anonymized export file so Offerors can validate parsing capability and estimate migration remediation effort?11. Requirement K.4 requires the new solution to coexist with legacy Control M during a phased migration. What is the expected coexistence period in months, and will the State require bidirectional job status visibility between Control M and the new solution during that period?12. Besides BMC Control M, are there any other scheduler platforms, such as TWS or IWS, CA 7, cron, or scripts, in use across Agencies that should be addressed in the migration rate card?13. Regarding N.3, the preferred capability to import existing Control-M viewpoint definitions — will the State provide sample viewpoint exports for testing? If not, can the State describe the approximate number and complexity of viewpoints currently in use?14. Requirement R.3 states that for on premise applications, integration with AD or Entra ID through OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML 2.0, or Kerberos is preferred. Is the State current AD and Entra ID deployment hybrid, with on premises AD synchronized to Entra ID, and must the solution support both simultaneously?15. Requirement R.2.3 requires RBAC to leverage Active Directory groups for role assignments. Does the State require direct LDAP group to role mapping, or is a SAML or OIDC claims based group assertion acceptable for on premises deployments?16. Requirement R.4 requires a roadmap for post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standards and support for elliptic-curve keys for file transfer. Will PQC readiness be scored as a discrete technical criterion, and if so, what weight does it carry in the evaluation rubric?17. The RFP requires TLS 1.2 or higher for all data in transit (R.5). Does the State have a preference for TLS 1.3, and are there network appliances (proxies, load balancers) that currently terminate TLS and may require specific cipher suite coordination?18. Requirement L.2 states the current system supports up to 5 file transfers within a single job definition. Is this a hard contractual ceiling (the solution must support exactly 5), or is the requirement for at least 5 with no upper limit preferred?19. Requirement L.4 requires native PGP/GPG encryption and decryption within a workflow. Does the State require PGP key management to be handled within the scheduler product itself (embedded keystore), or is integration with an external enterprise key manager acceptable?20. Does the State currently use AS2, FTPS, or any protocols beyond SFTP for managed file transfers? Are there requirements for MFT to and from external trading partners, or is the scope limited to internal State to State and State to Agency transfers?21. Requirement N.6 mandates automatic creation of ServiceNow incident tickets upon job failure. What ServiceNow instance will be used? Will the solution authenticate to ServiceNow through OAuth 2.0 or an API key, and are ServiceNow MID Server restrictions in place that would affect outbound API calls?22. N.6.1 states a preferred capability to populate ServiceNow tickets from existing templates. Does the State already have defined ServiceNow incident templates for batch job failures? If so, can the template schema be shared so Offerors can demonstrate field-level population during any product demonstration?23. Requirement N.10 lists OpenTelemetry, CloudWatch, and Prometheus as third-party monitoring integrations. Are any of these currently deployed and required for Day 1 integration, or are they future-state capabilities? Is there a preference for a specific telemetry protocol?24. Requirement N.8 specifies a 10-day short-term history and 18-month long-term archive. Are these exact figures the contractual requirement going forward, or are they examples of the current configuration that the new solution must be able to match or exceed?25. The Cost Proposal uses banded per task pricing based on actual maximum daily production task usage within the month. Should task be defined as each individual job execution, or each unique job definition ordered? Specifically, does a job that creates multiple subordinate tasks count as one task or many?26. Is there a State-preferred labor category structure for the services rate card (e.g., Project Manager, Solution Architect, Migration Engineer, Trainer), or may Offerors define their own role taxonomy? Are there hourly rate caps for any category?27. Does the 0.75 percent Revenue Share apply to the adjusted price after the 24 month price adjustment, or is it fixed to the original contract price? Does the Revenue Share apply to migration and professional services orders placed by Cooperative Purchasing Members, or only to software licensing fees?28. Can the State confirm whether an Offeror's standard Software License Agreement terms are acceptable as the basis for the Exhibit 2 MLA negotiation, or does the State require its own MLA template to be used without the Offeror's standard terms?29. The production-ready deadline is June 30, 2027. Does 'production-ready' mean all in-scope Agencies must be live on the new solution, or that the solution is installed, configured, and accepted by at least one Agency with others on a documented migration schedule?30. The Acceptance Procedure in Part 2, Section E.3, references a 90 day Performance Period with 30 consecutive days meeting the standard of performance. Does this Performance Period apply per Agency deployment, or only to the first production deployment? Who defines the specific standard of performance criteria?31. Does the State prefer in-person instructor-led training, virtual classroom, or self-paced eLearning for the required initial training plan? Is an existing vendor-provided curriculum for IWA acceptable, or must training be custom-developed for the State?32. Will the State require on-site implementation resources for any phase of deployment, or may the Contractor perform all installation, configuration, and training remotely? If on-site is required, at which Ohio locations?33. Section 6 references a 29-row Technical Proposal Evaluation table. Can the State confirm the specific weights assigned to each individual scoring criterion within the 1,010-point technical envelope (e.g., Deployment Architecture, Connectors, Security, Migration, Monitoring)?34. If product demonstrations are requested in Section 5E, will all shortlisted Offerors receive the same demonstration script and scenario, will the demonstration be scored separately as an additional evaluation criterion, and will scenario specifications be provided in advance?35. Part 1, Section V contains a 21 row Core versus Optional Features table. For features designated as Optional, are these scored within the technical evaluation, or excluded from scoring under Section 4, subsection B.1, item i? May an Offeror propose that optional features already included in the base license are available at no additional cost?36. The RFP references multiple State Agencies. Can the State confirm the number and names of Agencies expected to onboard at contract start? For each Agency, should the required non-production environment be implemented as a separate IWA instance, or may the Offeror use logical tenancy/partitioning within a shared IWA deployment while maintaining environmental isolation?37. For each Agency, can the State provide the current number of active defined jobs/job definitions, excluding historical executions and daily execution counts?38. For each Agency, can the State provide the current environment landscape, including the number and purpose of Production and Non-Production environments (e.g., DEV, TEST, QA, UAT, PROD), and identify which environments are expected in the target IWA solution?39. For each Agency, can the State describe the existing job dependencies, including dependencies within the same application, across applications, between distributed and mainframe workloads, and across Agencies, if applicable?40. For each Agency, are there custom scripts, utilities, wrappers, plug ins, or other custom components used by existing scheduler jobs? If yes, please provide approximate quantities, technologies and languages, and whether the Offeror is expected to modify or remediate them during migration.41. Does the State have a required Agency migration priority or sequence? If yes, please identify the highest-priority Agency for the first production go-live and the expected migration order/waves for the remaining Agencies.42. For each Agency, can the State identify all required third party integrations beyond standard ServiceNow and Active Directory or LDAP authentication, and indicate which integrations are required for Day 1 go live versus subsequent phases?43. The RFP requires the Solution to be production-ready no later than June 30, 2027. Does this mean all Agencies and workloads must be fully migrated and operational by this date, or only that the core IWA platform must be installed, configured, tested, and production-ready, with Agency migrations continuing thereafter?44. The RFP requires a Highly Available architecture with automatic failover. Can the State confirm whether HA is required separately for each Agency's Production environment, and whether a separate Disaster Recovery (DR) environment/site is also required? If DR is required, please provide the expected RTO, RPO, failover/failback requirements, and DR location.45. Can the State confirm the expiration/renewal date of the current distributed scheduler (BMC Control-M) licenses for each Agency? | Answer: Response 1 of 2 for inquiry #97248:1. The State will consider proposals where the primary architecture runs on one of the Operating systems listed. Agent components should also support the targeted Operating Systems.2. The State will accept Active/Passive configurations with automatic failover.3. This solution should not be hypervisor/container native. The State prefers this to be posted in an Operating System as listed above in a virtual server.4. Each non-production environment is expected to be it's own instance to provide full agency autonomy. It is expected to be less than five Agencies onboarding at contract start.5. The State plans to leverage our existing virutalized server environment to operate this Solution. If there are specific hardware requirements, please detail them in the proposal in the Offeror response - Section A (Deployment Architecture).6. The State currently has 2 production and 1 non-production LPARs. These LPARs are stand-alone LPARs and workload is not shared across them. Currently the zOS systems are running z/OS 2.5, with no plans of workload continuing beyond z/OS 2.5. Agent cost must be included in the proposal cost.7. For one agency, global conditions exist between between z/OS and Distributed, AND between distributed jobs. The total number of Distributed and Mainframe Global Conditions is 48,000. Another agency has 717 Active conditions in the PROD environment for distributed jobs only.8. A zOS resident agent is preferred. Other solutions will be considered.9. A response box for banded pricing is included on optional tab # 4 in Cost Proposal.10. This information can be provided after award. 11. The timeframe will need to be mutally agreed upon after award. We will need to maintain visibility to both environments until the migration is completed. 12. Some State agencies may have other schedulers which Offerors may wish to include in the rate card. The initially interested agencies currently only have Control-M.13. One agency has 45 Viewpoints in Production.14. Any new auth should go through either OHID (which is OIDC) or Entra ID. With that said, Entra auth will require an Entra App Registration. Any Entra App Registrations must be able to be scoped to the user if they are requesting any elevated permissions that require admin consent.15. The State does not require direct LDAP group to role mapping.16. Technical proposals will be scored as described in Section 6B.17. TLS 1.3 is preferred and we have appliances that currently terminate this version.18. Yes, the requirement is for at least 5 with no upper limit preferred.19. PGP key management in the scheduler product is not required, but in-lieu of that capability providing integration with an external enterprise key manager would be.20. Assume any prospective state agency could be using any combination of protocols for\with external and internal transfers.21. The State's ServiceNow instance is GCC, and is capable of both OAuth 2.0 and API Key authentication. Ther are no known MID Server restrictions in place that would impact API calls.22. State agencies may have differing ServiceNow Incident templates (for batch failures or otherwise), and a demonstration of any field-level population of a ServiceNow Incident should be sufficient.23. A prospective state agency may be actively using one of these or other third-party telemetry products and be required for day 1 integration. Other agencies may not be using any third-party telemetry product but wish to integrate one either at day 1 or as a part of a future-state roadmap.24. This is an example of a current configuration that the new solution must match or exceed.25. This should be calculated as each unique job definition ordered. Multiple iterations of the same workload should count as a single 'task' within the day.26. Please see the Cost Poposal document in OhioBuys. There is a tab specifically named Rate Card. There are no rate caps, categories are defined by the Cost Proposal.27. Revenue Share applies to all orders at the cost ordered.28. The State requires its own MLA template to be used.29. All in-scope Agencies must be live on the new solution by June 30, 2027. | Answered: Response 1 of 2 for inquiry #97248:1. The State will consider proposals where the primary architecture runs on one of the Operating systems listed. Agent components should also support the targeted Operating Systems. Inquiry Response 1 of 2 for inquiry #97248:1. The State will consider proposals where the primary architecture runs on one of the Operating systems listed. Agent components should also support the targeted Operating Systems. Inquiry 2. The State will accept Active/Passive configurations with automatic failover. Inquiry 3. This solution should not be hypervisor/container native. The State prefers this to be posted in an Operating System as listed above in a virtual server. Inquiry 4. Each non-production environment is expected to be it's own instance to provide full agency autonomy. It is expected to be less than five Agencies onboarding at contract start. Inquiry 5. The State plans to leverage our existing virutalized server environment to operate this Solution. If there are specific hardware requirements, please detail them in the proposal in the Offeror response - Section A (Deployment Architecture). Inquiry 6. The State currently has 2 production and 1 non-production LPARs. These LPARs are stand-alone LPARs and workload is not shared across them. Currently the zOS systems are running z/OS 2.5, with no plans of workload continuing beyond z/OS 2.5. Agent cost must be included in the proposal cost. Inquiry 7. For one agency, global conditions exist between between z/OS and Distributed, AND between distributed jobs. The total number of Distributed and Mainframe Global Conditions is 48,000. Another agency has 717 Active conditions in the PROD environment for distributed jobs only. Inquiry 8. A zOS resident agent is preferred. Other solutions will be considered. Inquiry 9. A response box for banded pricing is included on optional tab # 4 in Cost Proposal. Inquiry 10. This information can be provided after award. Inquiry 11. The timeframe will need to be mutally agreed upon after award. We will need to maintain visibility to both environments until the migration is completed. Inquiry 12. Some State agencies may have other schedulers which Offerors may wish to include in the rate card. The initially interested agencies currently only have Control-M. Inquiry 13. One agency has 45 Viewpoints in Production. Inquiry 14. Any new auth should go through either OHID (which is OIDC) or Entra ID. With that said, Entra auth will require an Entra App Registration. Any Entra App Registrations must be able to be scoped to the user if they are requesting any elevated permissions that require admin consent. Inquiry 15. The State does not require direct LDAP group to role mapping. Inquiry 16. Technical proposals will be scored as described in Section 6B. Inquiry 17. TLS 1.3 is preferred and we have appliances that currently terminate this version. Inquiry 18. Yes, the requirement is for at least 5 with no upper limit preferred. Inquiry 19. PGP key management in the scheduler product is not required, but in-lieu of that capability providing integration with an external enterprise key manager would be. Inquiry 20. Assume any prospective state agency could be using any combination of protocols for\with external and internal transfers. Inquiry 21. The State's ServiceNow instance is GCC, and is capable of both OAuth 2.0 and API Key authentication. Ther are no known MID Server restrictions in place that would impact API calls. Inquiry 22. State agencies may have differing ServiceNow Incident templates (for batch failures or otherwise), and a demonstration of any field-level population of a ServiceNow Incident should be sufficient. Inquiry 23. A prospective state agency may be actively using one of these or other third-party telemetry products and be required for day 1 integration. Other agencies may not be using any third-party telemetry product but wish to integrate one either at day 1 or as a part of a future-state roadmap. Inquiry 24. This is an example of a current configuration that the new solution must match or exceed. Inquiry 25. This should be calculated as each unique job definition ordered. Multiple iterations of the same workload should count as a single 'task' within the day. Inquiry 26. Please see the Cost Poposal document in OhioBuys. There is a tab specifically named Rate Card. There are no rate caps, categories are defined by the Cost Proposal. Inquiry 27. Revenue Share applies to all orders at the cost ordered. Inquiry 28. The State requires its own MLA template to be used. Inquiry 29. All in-scope Agencies must be live on the new solution by June 30, 2027. Inquiry 97697 | 1. The RFP lists Windows Server 2022 and 2025, RHEL 9.4, and AIX 7.3 as supported OS targets. Will the State consider proposals where the IWA server tier runs on RHEL 9.4 while agent components are deployed to Windows and AIX hosts, or must the primary server tier itself support all three OS options?2. For the HA requirement, will the State accept an Active Passive configuration with automatic failover, for example a switchover under 60 seconds, or is Active Active with load balanced simultaneous processing required?3. Does the State have a preferred hypervisor or container platform, such as VMware vSphere, Red Hat OpenShift, or bare metal, for the on premise deployment? Are containerized OCI compatible deployments acceptable?4. How many distinct Agencies are expected to onboard at contract start? Is each non production environment expected to be a full separate IWA instance, or is a logical tenant or partition within a shared instance acceptable?5. Will the State provide dedicated server hardware, or must the Contractor specify server requirements? The RFP prohibits hardware purchases under the contract — please confirm whether State-furnished servers are assumed and whether a minimum server specification document is available.6. Requirement J.8 mandates native JCL execution on z or OS mainframe. Please confirm the number of z or OS LPARs or sysplexes in scope, the z or OS versions currently running, and whether a z or OS agent is already licensed or must be included in the proposal cost.7. Requirement J.3 requires cross-platform job dependencies configurable for a minimum of 35 days. Are the existing global conditions primarily between z/OS and distributed jobs, or also between distributed jobs only? What is the approximate number of active global conditions?8. Does the State require the solution to submit JCL jobs directly to the JES spool through a z or OS resident agent, or is a secure file transfer based submission to JES acceptable as an alternative method?9. What is the total approximate number of active job definitions currently managed in BMC Control-M across all Agencies? What is the current maximum daily production task execution volume (used to determine the banded pricing tier)?10. Requirement B.2 states the solution must ingest job definitions from the Control M structured export format for initial migration. Can the State provide a sample anonymized export file so Offerors can validate parsing capability and estimate migration remediation effort?11. Requirement K.4 requires the new solution to coexist with legacy Control M during a phased migration. What is the expected coexistence period in months, and will the State require bidirectional job status visibility between Control M and the new solution during that period?12. Besides BMC Control M, are there any other scheduler platforms, such as TWS or IWS, CA 7, cron, or scripts, in use across Agencies that should be addressed in the migration rate card?13. Regarding N.3, the preferred capability to import existing Control-M viewpoint definitions — will the State provide sample viewpoint exports for testing? If not, can the State describe the approximate number and complexity of viewpoints currently in use?14. Requirement R.3 states that for on premise applications, integration with AD or Entra ID through OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML 2.0, or Kerberos is preferred. Is the State current AD and Entra ID deployment hybrid, with on premises AD synchronized to Entra ID, and must the solution support both simultaneously?15. Requirement R.2.3 requires RBAC to leverage Active Directory groups for role assignments. Does the State require direct LDAP group to role mapping, or is a SAML or OIDC claims based group assertion acceptable for on premises deployments?16. Requirement R.4 requires a roadmap for post-quantum cryptography (PQC) standards and support for elliptic-curve keys for file transfer. Will PQC readiness be scored as a discrete technical criterion, and if so, what weight does it carry in the evaluation rubric?17. The RFP requires TLS 1.2 or higher for all data in transit (R.5). Does the State have a preference for TLS 1.3, and are there network appliances (proxies, load balancers) that currently terminate TLS and may require specific cipher suite coordination?18. Requirement L.2 states the current system supports up to 5 file transfers within a single job definition. Is this a hard contractual ceiling (the solution must support exactly 5), or is the requirement for at least 5 with no upper limit preferred?19. Requirement L.4 requires native PGP/GPG encryption and decryption within a workflow. Does the State require PGP key management to be handled within the scheduler product itself (embedded keystore), or is integration with an external enterprise key manager acceptable?20. Does the State currently use AS2, FTPS, or any protocols beyond SFTP for managed file transfers? Are there requirements for MFT to and from external trading partners, or is the scope limited to internal State to State and State to Agency transfers?21. Requirement N.6 mandates automatic creation of ServiceNow incident tickets upon job failure. What ServiceNow instance will be used? Will the solution authenticate to ServiceNow through OAuth 2.0 or an API key, and are ServiceNow MID Server restrictions in place that would affect outbound API calls?22. N.6.1 states a preferred capability to populate ServiceNow tickets from existing templates. Does the State already have defined ServiceNow incident templates for batch job failures? If so, can the template schema be shared so Offerors can demonstrate field-level population during any product demonstration?23. Requirement N.10 lists OpenTelemetry, CloudWatch, and Prometheus as third-party monitoring integrations. Are any of these currently deployed and required for Day 1 integration, or are they future-state capabilities? Is there a preference for a specific telemetry protocol?24. Requirement N.8 specifies a 10-day short-term history and 18-month long-term archive. Are these exact figures the contractual requirement going forward, or are they examples of the current configuration that the new solution must be able to match or exceed?25. The Cost Proposal uses banded per task pricing based on actual maximum daily production task usage within the month. Should task be defined as each individual job execution, or each unique job definition ordered? Specifically, does a job that creates multiple subordinate tasks count as one task or many?26. Is there a State-preferred labor category structure for the services rate card (e.g., Project Manager, Solution Architect, Migration Engineer, Trainer), or may Offerors define their own role taxonomy? Are there hourly rate caps for any category?27. Does the 0.75 percent Revenue Share apply to the adjusted price after the 24 month price adjustment, or is it fixed to the original contract price? Does the Revenue Share apply to migration and professional services orders placed by Cooperative Purchasing Members, or only to software licensing fees?28. Can the State confirm whether an Offeror's standard Software License Agreement terms are acceptable as the basis for the Exhibit 2 MLA negotiation, or does the State require its own MLA template to be used without the Offeror's standard terms?29. The production-ready deadline is June 30, 2027. Does 'production-ready' mean all in-scope Agencies must be live on the new solution, or that the solution is installed, configured, and accepted by at least one Agency with others on a documented migration schedule?30. The Acceptance Procedure in Part 2, Section E.3, references a 90 day Performance Period with 30 consecutive days meeting the standard of performance. Does this Performance Period apply per Agency deployment, or only to the first production deployment? Who defines the specific standard of performance criteria?31. Does the State prefer in-person instructor-led training, virtual classroom, or self-paced eLearning for the required initial training plan? Is an existing vendor-provided curriculum for IWA acceptable, or must training be custom-developed for the State?32. Will the State require on-site implementation resources for any phase of deployment, or may the Contractor perform all installation, configuration, and training remotely? If on-site is required, at which Ohio locations?33. Section 6 references a 29-row Technical Proposal Evaluation table. Can the State confirm the specific weights assigned to each individual scoring criterion within the 1,010-point technical envelope (e.g., Deployment Architecture, Connectors, Security, Migration, Monitoring)?34. If product demonstrations are requested in Section 5E, will all shortlisted Offerors receive the same demonstration script and scenario, will the demonstration be scored separately as an additional evaluation criterion, and will scenario specifications be provided in advance?35. Part 1, Section V contains a 21 row Core versus Optional Features table. For features designated as Optional, are these scored within the technical evaluation, or excluded from scoring under Section 4, subsection B.1, item i? May an Offeror propose that optional features already included in the base license are available at no additional cost?36. The RFP references multiple State Agencies. Can the State confirm the number and names of Agencies expected to onboard at contract start? For each Agency, should the required non-production environment be implemented as a separate IWA instance, or may the Offeror use logical tenancy/partitioning within a shared IWA deployment while maintaining environmental isolation?37. For each Agency, can the State provide the current number of active defined jobs/job definitions, excluding historical executions and daily execution counts?38. For each Agency, can the State provide the current environment landscape, including the number and purpose of Production and Non-Production environments (e.g., DEV, TEST, QA, UAT, PROD), and identify which environments are expected in the target IWA solution?39. For each Agency, can the State describe the existing job dependencies, including dependencies within the same application, across applications, between distributed and mainframe workloads, and across Agencies, if applicable?40. For each Agency, are there custom scripts, utilities, wrappers, plug ins, or other custom components used by existing scheduler jobs? If yes, please provide approximate quantities, technologies and languages, and whether the Offeror is expected to modify or remediate them during migration.41. Does the State have a required Agency migration priority or sequence? If yes, please identify the highest-priority Agency for the first production go-live and the expected migration order/waves for the remaining Agencies.42. For each Agency, can the State identify all required third party integrations beyond standard ServiceNow and Active Directory or LDAP authentication, and indicate which integrations are required for Day 1 go live versus subsequent phases?43. The RFP requires the Solution to be production-ready no later than June 30, 2027. Does this mean all Agencies and workloads must be fully migrated and operational by this date, or only that the core IWA platform must be installed, configured, tested, and production-ready, with Agency migrations continuing thereafter?44. The RFP requires a Highly Available architecture with automatic failover. Can the State confirm whether HA is required separately for each Agency's Production environment, and whether a separate Disaster Recovery (DR) environment/site is also required? If DR is required, please provide the expected RTO, RPO, failover/failback requirements, and DR location.45. Can the State confirm the expiration/renewal date of the current distributed scheduler (BMC Control-M) licenses for each Agency? | Answer: Part 2 of 2 for inquiry #97248:30. The Performance period applies per Agency. If optional migration services have been leveraged by the Agency, those acceptance criteria must be mutually agreed upon during the outset of migration planning.31. In person or virutal training is preferred. The curriculum should cover the details outlined in Part 1, Section S. If exisitng curriculum covers the required content, then it may be leveraged.32. The State does not require on-site implementation, but each state agency that engages with the contract may have on-site implementation requirements.33. The weights assigned to each individual scoring criterion are correct.34. Please refer to the last paragraph of Section 5E.35. The Core vs Optional Feature chart is intended during the technical evaluation is to assist the state in clearly determining if an offorer has multiple components or feature packs which must be purchased to include all of the items listed, which packs and functions are part of each component in order to meet agency specific needs. The answers to section V are non-scored, and are for clarification only. Vendors may choose to price optional components as they see fit, however, must detail any associated costs with those optional features in the Cost Proposal.36. Each non-production environment is expected to be it's own instance to provide full agency autonomy. It is expected to be less than five Agencies onboarding at contract start.37. The State declines to answer at this time.38. This information can be provided after award.39. State agencies have same application and cross-application dependencies, as well as dependencies between distributed and mainframe workloads. State agencies do not share scheduler environments, there are no direct cross-agency dependencies.40. This information can be provided after award.41. It would be expected that each Agency would work independently on their go-live. Migrations may occur in tandem/parallel cycles.42. This information can be provided after award.43. The State hopes to be live in the new Solution no later than 6/30/2027 with all agency workloads migrated.44. Each Agency seeks to deploy their own production instance, so that they may retain complete control of their production environment. Each production instance should have HA capability. Separate DR specific instances are not part of the scope of this RFP. For Production systems, the Agencies may choose to leverage their strategic DR strategies which may include crash consistent replication to an alternate site.45. The current licenses end June 30, 2026. | Answered: Part 2 of 2 for inquiry #97248:30. The Performance period applies per Agency. If optional migration services have been leveraged by the Agency, those acceptance criteria must be mutually agreed upon during the outset of migration planning. Inquiry Part 2 of 2 for inquiry #97248:30. The Performance period applies per Agency. If optional migration services have been leveraged by the Agency, those acceptance criteria must be mutually agreed upon during the outset of migration planning. Inquiry 31. In person or virutal training is preferred. The curriculum should cover the details outlined in Part 1, Section S. If exisitng curriculum covers the required content, then it may be leveraged. Inquiry 32. The State does not require on-site implementation, but each state agency that engages with the contract may have on-site implementation requirements. Inquiry 33. The weights assigned to each individual scoring criterion are correct. Inquiry 34. Please refer to the last paragraph of Section 5E. Inquiry 35. The Core vs Optional Feature chart is intended during the technical evaluation is to assist the state in clearly determining if an offorer has multiple components or feature packs which must be purchased to include all of the items listed, which packs and functions are part of each component in order to meet agency specific needs. The answers to section V are non-scored, and are for clarification only. Vendors may choose to price optional components as they see fit, however, must detail any associated costs with those optional features in the Cost Proposal. Inquiry 36. Each non-production environment is expected to be it's own instance to provide full agency autonomy. It is expected to be less than five Agencies onboarding at contract start. Inquiry 37. The State declines to answer at this time. Inquiry 38. This information can be provided after award. Inquiry 39. State agencies have same application and cross-application dependencies, as well as dependencies between distributed and mainframe workloads. State agencies do not share scheduler environments, there are no direct cross-agency dependencies. Inquiry 40. This information can be provided after award. Inquiry 41. It would be expected that each Agency would work independently on their go-live. Migrations may occur in tandem/parallel cycles. Inquiry 42. This information can be provided after award. Inquiry 43. The State hopes to be live in the new Solution no later than 6/30/2027 with all agency workloads migrated. Inquiry 44. Each Agency seeks to deploy their own production instance, so that they may retain complete control of their production environment. Each production instance should have HA capability. Separate DR specific instances are not part of the scope of this RFP. For Production systems, the Agencies may choose to leverage their strategic DR strategies which may include crash consistent replication to an alternate site. Inquiry 45. The current licenses end June 30, 2026. Inquiry 98005 | Hi Team,I hope the weekend was good. Please review the second set of questions received. Apologies if they are somewhat reductive: Implementation versus Migration ScopePlease clarify the distinction between implementation activities that must be included in the Offeror's base implementation cost and migration services that may be procured separately through the Rate Card. Specifically, should installation, configuration, agent deployment, integration configuration, testing, training, and production cutover be included in the base implementation cost, while conversion of existing scheduler artifacts is considered optional migration work? Migration Services as Optional WorkPlease confirm that Migration Services under Part 1, Section M are optional services that an Agency may procure through the Rate Card and are not required to be included in the Offeror's evaluated implementation cost. June 30, 2027 Production Ready RequirementThe RFP states that the proposed Solution must be production ready no later than June 30, 2027. Does production ready mean that the Solution must be installed, configured, tested, and available for production use by that date, or does the State expect all existing Agency workloads to have completed migration to the new Solution by June 30, 2027? Existing Environment and Migration InventoryWill the State provide an inventory of each Agency's existing scheduling environment during onboarding and discovery, including scheduler product and version, number of production and nonproduction environments, jobs and tasks, calendars, agents and endpoints, file transfer definitions, integrations, and mainframe and distributed dependencies? If so, at what point will this information be made available? Legacy and New Solution InteroperabilityThe RFP requires the new Solution to coexist and interoperate with legacy scheduling environments during a phased migration. Please clarify the State's definition of interoperate. Is the expectation simply that both scheduling platforms operate concurrently during transition, or must the new Solution support active dependencies, conditions, events, job triggers, and status exchange between the legacy scheduler and the new Solution? Migration Fidelity and Acceptance CriteriaPlease clarify the State's acceptance criteria for the requirement that migrated workloads preserve critical job attributes with a high degree of fidelity. Will the State establish measurable acceptance criteria or thresholds for successful automated conversion versus items requiring manual remediation? State versus Contractor Infrastructure ResponsibilitiesFor the on premises deployment, please identify the infrastructure components the State will provision and manage, including servers and virtual machines, operating systems, databases, storage, load balancers, domain name services, certificates, firewall rules, and network connectivity, and identify the components expected to be provided by the Contractor. Ordering and Pricing of Migration ServicesFor migration, implementation assistance, and other services procured through the Rate Card, please clarify whether Agencies will issue Statements of Work on a time and materials basis using the awarded hourly rates, establish a negotiated amount not to exceed based on estimated hours, or require a fixed price Statement of Work. | Answer: 1.The installation, configuration, agent deployment, integration configuration, testing, training, production cutover and the conversion of existing scheduler artifacts should be included in the base implementation cost.2.The State would like to see OPTIONAL Migration Services rates. The Offeror's evaluated implementation costs should indicate any mandatory costs (one time fees, perpetual licenses costs) that may not be part of the recurring costs.3.The State intends to be live in the new Solution no later than 6/30/2027 with all agency workloads completely migrated.4.This information would be available at the time an Agency chooses to come sign onto the enterprise contract pricing.5.At a minimum, concurrent operations between products - the abilitiy to move workloads in smaller pieces than an all-or-nothing migration, must be achieveable. Offeror may choose to leverage product capabilities such as triggers, events, job completion, etc. to achieve this interoperability, but should clearly document their Solution in the proposal.6.See Part 1 section K of the RFP.7.Contractor is responsible for Architecture diagrams, best practices for deployment.The State will be responsible for all infrastructure components including servers/virtual machines, operating systems, databases, storage, networking, load balancers, domain name services. 8.Per the RFP, the Migration referenced in the scope of work would be based on the rate card, Implementation referenced in the scope of work would be fixed price based on the cost proposal. However, agencies can also use the rate card for "Additional Statements of Work and/or Deliverables" referenced in Part 2 of the RFP. | Answered: 1.The installation, configuration, agent deployment, integration configuration, testing, training, production cutover and the conversion of existing scheduler artifacts should be included in the base implementation cost. Inquiry 1.The installation, configuration, agent deployment, integration configuration, testing, training, production cutover and the conversion of existing scheduler artifacts should be included in the base implementation cost. Inquiry 2.The State would like to see OPTIONAL Migration Services rates. The Offeror's evaluated implementation costs should indicate any mandatory costs (one time fees, perpetual licenses costs) that may not be part of the recurring costs. Inquiry 3.The State intends to be live in the new Solution no later than 6/30/2027 with all agency workloads completely migrated. Inquiry 4.This information would be available at the time an Agency chooses to come sign onto the enterprise contract pricing. Inquiry 5.At a minimum, concurrent operations between products - the abilitiy to move workloads in smaller pieces than an all-or-nothing migration, must be achieveable. Offeror may choose to leverage product capabilities such as triggers, events, job completion, etc. to achieve this interoperability, but should clearly document their Solution in the proposal. Inquiry 6.See Part 1 section K of the RFP. Inquiry 7.Contractor is responsible for Architecture diagrams, best practices for deployment.The State will be responsible for all infrastructure components including servers/virtual machines, operating systems, databases, storage, networking, load balancers, domain name services. Inquiry 8.Per the RFP, the Migration referenced in the scope of work would be based on the rate card, Implementation referenced in the scope of work would be fixed price based on the cost proposal. However, agencies can also use the rate card for "Additional Statements of Work and/or Deliverables" referenced in Part 2 of the RFP. Inquiry 98009 | Hello, We would like to find out if there is a deadline to submit any questions related to this RFP or if the deadline of 10/6/2026 is the only cutoff for the entire RFP?Thank you,Stonebranch Team | Answer: In OhioBuys it states that the inquiry period ends Tuesday, September 29, 2026 at 8:00am. | Answered: 9/16/2026 Inquiry 98012 | Hi Team, Are vendors able to leverage an existing State Terms Schedule for Software Licensing in lieu of redlines to Exhibit 2 - Master Contract Software Licensing Agreement. please? | Answer: No. This is a new contract with a new Master Contract Software Licensing Agreement. | Answered: 9/16/2026 Inquiry 98287 | Hi TeamMy apologies on the lack of sentence structure and punctuation on these submissions. I am finding the security/threat analysis on the portal extremely prohibitive and trying to ensure compliance.Please find licensing questions below: 1 Please confirm whether licensing should be calculated separately by agency or as a consolidated enterprise deployment 2 Please provide the processor manufacturer processor model socket count physical core count and activated core count for all production nonproduction high availability and disaster recovery servers included in scope 3 Please identify all virtualization technologies hypervisors partitions container platforms and clustering technologies used in the target environment 4 Please indicate whether proposed solutions should be priced using full capacity licensing subcapacity licensing or either approach 5 If subcapacity licensing is permitted please confirm whether the State maintains and supports the tools and processes required for subcapacity compliance and reporting 6 Please identify all production nonproduction development test training high availability and disaster recovery environments that will require licensing 7 Please provide the expected number of scheduling engines management servers user interfaces agents managed nodes and application integration endpoints required across all participating agencies 8 Please identify whether any servers clusters virtual hosts or management components will be shared across agencies 9 Please provide the expected annual growth rate for infrastructure capacity managed endpoints and participating agencies over the contract term 10 Please clarify how disaster recovery failover backup warm standby and nonproduction environments should be included in pricing and license calculations 11 Please identify any anticipated processor hosting virtualization or architecture changes expected during the contract term that may affect licensing requirements 12 Please confirm whether pricing should be based on current infrastructure sizing only or should include projected future growth 13 For licensing purposes please confirm whether the task counts provided in the cost proposal represent unique jobs job executions scheduled occurrences job definitions or another measurement 14 Please confirm whether failed executions reruns retries cyclic jobs and restarted jobs are included in the provided task counts 15 If actual historical volumes are available please provide the monthly task counts for the most recent twelve complete months 16 Please identify the peak actual monthly volume experienced during the most recent twelve month period 17 Please clarify whether workflows executed across multiple environments are counted once or multiple times 18 Please identify whether future workload growth is expected and provide estimated annual growth percentages for licensing and pricing purposes 19 Please identify the number of z OS logical partitions Parallel Sysplex environments and central processor complexes included in scope 20 Please provide the machine type model and applicable capacity measurement for every in scope mainframe system 21 Please provide the z OS version and maintenance level for each logical partition included in scope 22 Please confirm whether full capacity or subcapacity software pricing applies and provide the applicable capacity reports 23 Please provide the product edition version licensing metric entitled capacity covered environments and support status for all existing mainframe scheduler entitlements 24 Please confirm whether existing mainframe software entitlements may be reused transferred upgraded or expanded for the replacement solution 25 Please identify the required production nonproduction high availability and disaster recovery mainframe components including primary controllers backup controllers and trackers 26 Please identify planned processor upgrades capacity increases logical partition changes or sysplex changes during the contract term 27 Please provide active mainframe job definition counts and peak daily and monthly execution volumes for each environment 28 Please confirm whether the task volumes in the cost workbook include all mainframe job executions and clarify the treatment of reruns restarts recoveries and cross platform jobs 29 Please identify which mainframe integrations and optional components must be included in the base software price 30 Please provide complete infrastructure sizing details including processor models core counts virtualization technologies production and nonproduction environments and disaster recovery environments that will require licensing 31 Please define the licensable task unit and confirm whether the supplied task quantities include mainframe executions reruns restarts recoveries and cross platform jobs | Answer: 1. The State would prefer that each agency be charged directly for their usage. We would prefer that a vendor recognize the total utilization for the purposes of determining tiered pricing. 2. The State declines to provide this information at this time. This RFP is for task based licensing, not CPU based licensing. 3. Currently, VMWare is the only hypervisor for our distributed platform. 4. The State declines to provide this information at this time. This RFP is asking for task based licensing not CPU based licensing. 5. The State is seeking task based usage licensing at this time, not capacity based licensing. Tooling that is required to support product deployment, chargeback, and measurement should be part of the scope of implementation. 6. Agencies may choose to leverage this software after a Solution has been chosen. At this time, we are not able to provide firm counts for all environments as each Agency may have different needs. 7. No Agencies are guarenteed to participate in this contract, and each Agency may choose of their own voliton to particiapte based on business need. 8. The State desires that each Agency will maintain their own software infrastrucutre. Based on the nature of the centralized virtual server hosting provided in the State environment, some underlying hardware may be shared, however it would be unbeknownst to the Agencies. 9. No Agencies are guarenteed to participate in this contract, and each Agency may choose of their own voliton to particiapte based on business need. 10. For non-production, please see Part 1 - Scope of Work. Other vendor licensing practices should be completed from a cost perspective on the cost proposal. If there are any technical descriptions for how licensing is calculated (without pricing) those terms should be explained in the Proposal. 11. There are no planned changes to our distributed hosting virutalization process. The State is moving away from Mainframe processing, and therefore, mainframe endpoints will not be required for the full term of the contract. 12. Pricing should be based on the banded, task-based pricing as explained on the cost proposal. 13. This should be calculated as each unique job definition ordered. Multiple iterations of the same workload should count as a single 'task' within the day. 14. This should be calculated as each unique job definition ordered. Multiple iterations of the same workload should count as a single 'task' within the day. 15.The state declines to provide this at this time. 16. Maximum total monthly volume was 481,534 tasks. Maximum combined daily value within that period was 24,913 17. Each job within a workflow counts as it's own task. If a workflow executes one function on Machine A and then executes a separate script on Machine B, this would count as 2 tasks. 18. The State declines to provide a response at this time, as future growth is currently uncertain. 19. There are 3 independent LPARs with GRS-enabled disk sharing in a single plex. This runs on a single z/13 CEC. 20. The State declines to provide this information at this time. This RFP is for task based licensing, not CPU based licensing. 21. Z/OS 2.5 RSU2603 22. The State declines to provide this information at this time. This RFP is for task based licensing, not CPU based licensing. 23. The State declines to provide this information at this time. This RFP is focused on Distributed scheduling. 24. This option was not part of the scope of this project and therefore cannot be offered as a solution. 25. As the mainframe is only an endpoint in the desired configuration, it is not intended to be High-Availability. For Disaster Recovery, we use crash consistent mirrored DASD to a secondary site. 26. There are no planned changes during the contract term as of this time. 27. The State is actively divesting from the Mainframe environment. We expect that less than 100 jobs will still be required within the Mainframe space at the time of migration. 28. This scheduler is not intended to be the primary mainframe scheduler and is only intended to integrate where there are specific jobs which need to interface with the mainframe 29. A z/OS endpoint agent capable of running jobs, capturing event data for triggers, and capable of sending status back to the main reporting console should be included. 30. The State declines to provide this information at this time. This RFP is for task based licensing, not CPU based licensing. 31. This should be calculated as each unique job definition ordered. Multiple iterations of the same workload should count as a single 'task' within the day. Mainframe volumes are not currently included in these counts. | Answered: 9/18/2026 Inquiry 98290 | Hi Team,With such a highly involved response, we understand the team is fielding a lot of questions. Checking to see if we can extend the due date; we want to submit our best response and have a fair amount of time to take answers from the State and apply to proposals.Thank you | Answer: At this time, the State will not be extending the proposal due date. | Answered: 9/18/2026