Military Sealift Command Next Generation Wideband

COMMERCIAL SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS REQUEST FOR INFORMATION AND SMALL BUSINESS SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE ________________________________________ GENERAL INFORMATION Document Type: Request for Information and Sources Sought Notice Solicitation Number: MSC-NGW Posted Date: 02 February 2009, Amended 19 February 2009 Original Response Date: 03 March 2009 Current Response Date: 03 March 2009 Original Archive Date: 24 March 2009 Current Archive Date: 24 March 2009 Classification Code: D - Information Technology Services, including Telecommunications Services NAICS Code: 517410 - Satellite Telecommunications Carriers/Resellers DESCRIPTION PURPOSE: The purpose of this announcement is to encourage your company to respond to the RFI. This is market research to assist the government in its ability to meet its needs. The purpose of publishing this notice is two-fold. First, it is a Request for Information (RFI) to conduct market research which will be used to formulate an acquisition strategy for turnkey "solution provider engineered" space segment services, supporting hardware/software, and lifecycle support services necessary to provide end-to-end Internet Protocol (IP) communications connecting the global Military Sealift Command (MSC) maritime/mobile platforms to the two fixed shore-side MSC Continental United States (CONUS) Network Operation Centers (NOCs). This should be an all-inclusive integrated solution that will require minimum MSC effort to install, operate, and maintain. Secondly, it is a sources sought notice for small businesses that can provide the required services under the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) Code 517410, Satellite Telecommunications Carriers/Resellers. All small businesses to include Small Disadvantaged, HUBZone, Women-Owned and Service Disabled are strongly encouraged to provide timely responses to this RFI. A response to this RFI will assist DISA in determining the potential levels of interest, adequate competition, and technical capability within the small business community to provide the required services. In addition, this information will be used to establish a basis for developing any subsequent potential subcontract/small business participation plan small business goal percentages. This Sources Sought Synopsis is issued to assist the agency in performing market research to determine whether there are qualified and capable small businesses to provide turnkey commercial satellite communications service to MSC. Request small business respond and discuss your company's ability to perform in accordance with the Limitations on Subcontracting clause (FAR 52.219-14). Interested small businesses meeting the small business standard of NAICS code 517410 are requested to submit a response to this RFI. Please include your DUNS number and CAGE code and a statement of self-certification under the NAICS code. Request your response include recent (within the past 5 years) and relevant experience (work similar in type and scope) to include contract numbers, project titles, dollar amounts, and points of contact with telephone numbers where the offeror performed the relevant work. Although marketing brochures and generic company literature may contain pertinent information, these would not be sufficient for the Government to determine capability of the business to perform the scope of work required. This RFI is issued solely for information and planning purposes and does not constitute a Request for Proposal or a promise to issue a Request for Proposal in the future. This RFI does not commit the Government to contract for any supply or service. Respondents are advised that the U.S. Government will not pay for any information or administrative costs incurred in responding to this RFI. TARGET AUDIENCE: Satellite operators, managed service providers, and satellite system engineering and integration resellers and integrators who can integrate and provide turnkey end-to-end integrated Commercial Satellite Communications (COMSATCOM) services, infrastructure, and operations for MSC. In particular, small businesses are requested to respond to this RFI to assist MSC in formulating an acquisition strategy that fairly considers small business ability to participate in the acquisition, either as prime contractors or as subcontractors. BACKGROUND: COMSATCOM is an essential component of today's DoD communications. Current capacity of on-orbit Military Satellite Communications (MILSATCOM) systems cannot meet the increasing communications demands of the joint warfighters. MSC intends to implement the Next Generation Wideband (NGW) technology to replace/upgrade the current MSC Afloat Bandwidth Efficient Satellite Transport (BEST) COMSATCOM infrastructure. The BEST system has provided MSC with robust service connectivity for voice, data, and imagery, both secure and non-secure, for both classified and unclassified missions. More than 70 MSC vessels currently have their voice and data networks connected to the MSC Ashore Enterprise via BEST. MSC implemented the BEST solution as an overlay to its existing legacy International Maritime Satellite (Inmarsat) infrastructure. The BEST solution has achieved efficiencies on the order of 300 percent relative to the legacy Inmarsat architectures previously used by MSC. The annual recurring operating cost for MSC has remained virtually the same, while service throughput tripled and changed from periodic narrowband voice or data to full period wideband multimedia voice, data, Internet, and intranet (SIPRNET and NIPRNET). The following events have necessitated the replacement of the BEST infrastructure: - The BEST Satellite Communications (SATCOM) services infrastructure is no longer able to satisfy expanding MSC mission requirements. - The current SATCOM terminals utilized by BEST (NERA Bm) are reaching end-of-life. - The supporting Inmarsat satellite constellation is nearing end-of-life. As a follow-up to this RFI, DISA may host an Industry Days unclassified event, including one-on-one sessions between DoD and industry representatives, allowing for a more engaging exchange with the satellite industry. Attendance may be limited to businesses which respond to this RFI. Additional information regarding the conference agenda would be released in advance of Industry Days. Market Research: The following questions are intended to help structure a potential future COMSATCOM services acquisition that effectively leverages the commercial marketplace, delivering COMSATCOM services in concert with industry best practices to meet unique MSC goals and objectives. The preliminary Statement of Objectives (SOO) (Attachment A) provides insight into the planned Key Performance Parameters (KPPs) for a potential acquisition. Questions pertain to the full range of COMSATCOM services, as applicable, including fixed and mobile satellite services, managed services, as well as any potential future service offerings. We welcome additional insights beyond the specific questions in this RFI that vendors may be able to offer to help shape our potential acquisition. 1. Given the information contained in the SOO, what would you recommend to meet MSC's objectives? For example, but not limited to: a. Where have we offered too few constraints and why? What else is needed? b. Where have we offered too many constraints and why? What should be deleted? c. Would any specific type of solution provide particular advantages to MSC based on this SOO? Please briefly define this solution and type and rationale or advantages. d. What future technological improvements/enhancements may become available to MSC? 2. Are there any requirements within the SOO that are technically challenging? If yes, please explain further and suggest alternative strategies that could mitigate the implications of these technical challenges. 3. Does the way the SOO is worded or the vastness of the coverage requirements pose particular challenges? Are there any particular aspects that unduly drive cost? How could a slightly modified requirement offer potential for significant cost savings? 4. Is any aspect of the equipment and installation requirements particularly difficult or expensive? Please elaborate. 5. To understand the capability of available maritime COMSATCOM equipment to support our performance requirements, please provide any information that conveys the size and performance for antennas and terminals in a shipboard environment. Ship movement and satellite handover are of particular interest. 6. How would you recommend that we support a potential surge in bandwidth requirements in a certain area of the world? (For example, a sudden shift of many ships to a particular location.) How could costs be optimized for this type of requirement expansion? 7. Given MSC's varying mission locations, portability of services between regions may be required. MSC is interested to learn more about commercial best practices regarding portability of services. a. How does industry define portability of COMSATCOM services? b. How does industry approach the delivery of portability to MSC? What is required for industry to "guarantee" portability of services? What terms and conditions are associated with portability? c. What types of costs are there and under what circumstances may they be incurred? How could these costs be minimized? d. What new systems architectures could make portability of services easier to execute and utilize, and/or more cost effective (e.g., network managed service)? e. Are there any innovative approaches or capabilities within industry that MSC should be aware of? How would these approaches or capabilities impact MSC's acquisition of COMSATCOM services? 8. MSC requires COMSATCOM shipboard installation and support services to be performed anywhere in the world. Explain how your company provides worldwide installation and support services. 9. MSC desires end-to-end situational awareness into its satellite and terrestrial communications systems to evaluate the impact of performance degradation and outages to ongoing and planned missions. Therefore, MSC would like to leverage commercially available operational information to the maximum extent possible. MSC requests information to help examine how to best access commercially available information providing end-to-end situational awareness of provisioned services: o Spectral monitoring of all MSC leased bandwidth and provisioned services; o Service performance data (e.g., EIRP, BER, Eb/No, C/kT); and o Configuration changes in equipment used to support MSC leased COMSATCOM services. MSC wishes to leverage industry best practices for management, monitoring, and control resources to the maximum extent possible to provide situational awareness of end-to-end provisioned services such as notification of planned and unplanned outages, interference events, intrusion detection events, and component degradation. a. Are there any aspects of monitoring and control which would incur or could be added with extra costs? b. Please provide technical details and articulate what information with what frequency and delay can be made available to a customer. c. Please provide your strategy for interference monitoring and detection (interference to and by MSC users). d. What situational awareness information is normally collected within industry as part of day-to-day operations? Are there any open/industry standards defining how this data is collected and managed? e. To what extent does the situational awareness information referenced in Question 1 already exist and to what extent is it available to be provided to MSC? How close to real time could the information be made available? f. How consistent is your company's ability to support this need across the globe? If inconsistent, what is the basis and how might this be resolved? g. What type of trouble tracking capability and information is currently in use and can industry provide to MSC? What is considered a reportable service outage? h. What construct for Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with respect to situational awareness are typical within the commercial industry? What experience does your company have with commitments on service availability, anomaly resolution, etc.? i. What situational awareness data would your company be unwilling to share with the Government? j. How does your company share planned outages and unplanned outages and what are the typical response times? 10. Given the fundamental importance of commercial satellite communications services to the warfighters, secure and uninterrupted service and timely anomaly resolution is a critical service requirement. MSC must carefully consider the most effective way to attain cost-effective mission supporting services while meeting unique DoD requirements. a. How is your company positioned to support DoD security requirements, specifically: o Personnel with U.S. Secret or NATO Secret Clearances; o Secure facilities with an approved Facilities Security Clearance; o Secure communications (e.g., STU/STE); o Electromagnetic Interference/Radio Frequency Interference incident resolution; and o Certification/accreditation of information systems in accordance with DoD policies and procedures, e.g., NIST, FISMA, DIACAP, etc. b. Do you foresee any change in the future? c. How consistent is your company's ability to support this need across the globe? If inconsistent, what is the basis and how might this be resolved? d. If foreign owned, what steps have you taken (or do you plan to take), to best meet DoD security needs? e. What lessons learned from past experience in providing services to DoD customers can be leveraged to better facilitate the delivery of robust COMSATCOM services? 11. The SOO currently requires global homogenous capacity based on Kpbs. We also may require incremental capacity either globally or regionally during parts of the period of performance. We would like to understand how this deviates from the way that industry typically would sell bandwidth to a geographically diverse customer. In addition: a. Would you recommend an alternative or more defined breakout of bandwidth requirements? b. Considering that a user typically can get more Kbps per KHz near the center of a satellite beam, and considering that our requirement includes homogenous Kbps threshold and objective levels, what are the implications and what alternative may better align with industry practices? c. How might prices best be broken out (i.e., CLINs) and proposed for us to most effectively assess costs for our baseline and any future bandwidth requirements? d. How might we best leverage scale economies, both for our baseline as well as any future bandwidth purchases? 12. To provide us a vector against our estimates and program funding, please provide rough estimates for costs against the high level comprehensive list of cost elements below: Cost Element Annual Recurring Costs Total Non Recurring Costs Satellite Bandwidth % % Terrestrial % % Equipment % % Installation % % Integration % % Lifecycle Support % % Total 5 year ROM $ $ a. Which requirements or aspects in the SOO drive costs? Why? b. Which requirements or aspects in the SOO could be modified to reduce costs? c. Please discuss possible modifications and potential impacts on costs. d. Which requirements or aspects in the SOO have an opportunity to be modified to reduce costs/optimize value? 13. What is a rough estimate for the time from award of contract to Initial Operating Capability (IOC) for the first ship? What are the primary drivers of this timeframe? Which requirements or aspects in the SOO drive schedule? How can these be streamlined from an MSC perspective? Is the proposed equipment deployment/installation schedule in 5.5.3 attainable? 14. MSC may require offerors, deemed to be in the competitive range, to undergo Prototype Testing. The primary purpose of the testing is to validate the performance and assess the usability of the systems proposed by the leading RFP offerors. The test results would be utilized in the down-select process to determine which offeror would receive awards to implement production pilots. We want to minimize cost and schedule impacts. The NGW RFP Prototype Testbed consists of three network infrastructures representing two ships and one NOC within the STF laboratory facility in Chesapeake, VA. The two "ship" network infrastructures will be connected to two complete ship sets of offeror-owned satellite equipment (including VoIP gateways). The "NOC" network will interconnect with the two "ship" network infrastructures via a backhaul link to the offeror-designated Land Earth Station (LES). Each offeror selected for prototype testing would provide, at their expense, the following resources in support of the testing effort: a. Satellite infrastructure (as specified in the applicable proposal) to equip two ships; b. Terrestrial infrastructure (as specified in the applicable proposal) to equip one NOC; c. LES resources to support the two ships and one NOC (including the backhaul link from the LES to Chesapeake, VA); d. Personnel to install, operate, and support the satellite infrastructure; e. Personnel to provide appropriate instruction in use of the solution; f. Applicable satellite infrastructure documentation; and g. Offerors will be given at least seven days notice prior to the testing initiation. Following offeror equipment installation and operation verification, testing duration will be no more than three 8-hour periods over 3 consecutive days. Do you foresee any problems with this requirement? What timeline would you expect to be necessary? How might this influence industry responses and willingness to participate? 15. Can you offer any other insights or recommendations not articulated in this RFI that may help shape this potential acquisition? What are the benefits to MSC for your recommendations? Additional Requested Information: 1. Request your response describe your company's demonstrated ability to perform the work detailed in the above background section and in the following specific areas: a. Leasing FSS C-, X-, Ku-, and/or Ka-band bandwidth and/or procuring MSS airtime on a worldwide basis on behalf of an enterprise consumer from multiple global and regional providers. Please include the amount of bandwidth leased and how this experience can be applied to the scale necessary to support MSC. b. Determining feasibility (e.g., link budget analysis) and leasing technical solutions in response to high-level communications requirements including obtaining licenses and host nation agreements/landing rights to activate the leased service. Include metrics (shortest, average, and longest) on the companies' observed ability to obtain host nation agreements/landing rights. c. Implementing strategies that optimize performance or minimize enterprise lease costs (e.g., combining multiple service requests across services/geographic areas to achieve economic order quantities) in an ongoing or long-term basis. d. Providing worldwide quick reaction service (i.e., several hours) on behalf of an enterprise consumer including measured response times, if available. e. Supporting requests to add/modify the bandwidth provided in separate regions as needed. f. Integrating multiple sources of RF spectrum and link and terminal status information into an enterprise-level situational awareness picture. Monitoring and reporting performance and providing rapid customer response to outages/degradations including measured response times, if available. g. Installing maritime satellite communications hardware anywhere in the world. h. Providing lifecycle support to a maritime customer fleet anywhere in the world. 2. Description of one or more functional alignments (e.g., FSS operator, MSS operator, managed service provider, SE&I reseller). RESPONSES An Industry Days event is planned after receipt of RFI responses. Participation in the Industry Days may be limited to companies responding to the RFI; for planning purposes, will you indicate by return email to the POC(s) if your company plans to submit a response to the RFI? Responses to RFI and Sources Sought questions will be reviewed prior to the Industry Days event, facilitating more efficient use of the one-on-one sessions. Request you mail two identical copies of your responses (on two CDs) to Military Sealift Command, 914 Charles Morris CT S.E. ATTN: Ken Toy, Bldg 210, N62 Washington Navy Yard, DC 20398-5540. Please send an E-Copy of the RFI responses to "RFI_Responses@DISA.MIL" ATTN: Tricia Singler. Request your response by 03 March 2009. We request that responses be single-spaced, Times New Roman, 12 point font with 1-inch margins, and compatible with MS Office Word 2003. Proprietary information and trade secrets, if any, must be clearly marked on the outside container and materials inside. All information received that is marked Proprietary will be handled accordingly. Please be advised that all submissions become Government property and will not be returned. DISA intends to have contractor support personnel assist in review and assimilation of responses. All Government and contractor personnel reviewing RFI responses will have signed non-disclosure agreements and understand their responsibility for proper use and protection from unauthorized disclosure of proprietary information as described 41 USC 423. The Government shall not be held liable for any damages incurred if proprietary information is not properly identified. POINT OF CONTACT Karen Kincaid, Contracting Officer, Phone 618-229-9451, Fax 618-229-9174, Email karen.kincaid@disa.mil or Cindy Showers, Contract Specialist, Phone 618-229-9464, Fax 618-229-9174, Email cindy.showers@disa.mil CONTRACTING OFFICE ADDRESS Defense Information Systems Agency, Procurement and Logistics, DITCO-Scott, 2300 East Drive Bldg 3600, Scott AFB, IL, 62225-5406