Questions Due Date

***UPDATE*** REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) SOURCES SOUGHT FOR: Global Enterprise Modeling and Simulation as a Service (GEMSaaS) INTRODUCTION The Army Contracting Command-Aberdeen Proving Ground (ACC-APG), Huachuca Division, Fort Huachuca, Arizona is seeking information on business sources that can provide non-personal service support as synopsized below. Prospective contractors shall be registered in the System for Award Management (SAM) prior to award of a contract. Contractors are encouraged to obtain further information on SAM registration at: https://www.sam.gov/portal/public/SAM The purpose of this RFI is as a means of conducting market research to gain knowledge of interest, capabilities, socio-economic information, and qualifications of members of the business community who can support this requirement, and to identify parties having the resources to support the requirement to provide a global, integrated solution that will support and provide active, persistent monitoring and analysis of the enterprise network environment. "THIS RFI/SOURCES SOUGHT IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. THIS IS NOT A "REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP)". It does not constitute a solicitation and shall not be construed as a commitment by the government. Responses to this sources sought synopsis will be used by the Government to make appropriate determinations about potential sources only and the Government is under no obligation to award a contract as a result of this announcement. No funds are available to pay for preparation of responses to this announcement. Any information submitted by respondents to this technical description is strictly voluntary. The Government will use responses to make appropriate acquisition decisions. Responses will not be returned to the responder. Not responding to this notice does not preclude participation in any future Request for Proposal (RFP), if any is issued. If a solicitation is released, it will be synopsized on the Government-Wide Point of Entry (GPE). It is the responsibility of potential offerors to monitor the GPE for additional information pertaining to this requirement." Interested contractors should demonstrate the experience and technical capability necessary to successfully perform the requirements described herein. The subject requirement is to provide non-personal support services for US Army NETCOM. The procurement classification code for this requirement is D318, integrated hardware/software/services solution, predominantly services. The Government considers NAICS 541519, other computer Related Services as the preponderant NAICS code for this acquisition. The Government anticipates that this effort will be structured with a base year and four, 12-month option periods. SUBMISSION DETAILS AND CAPABILITIES STATEMENT Interested parties are requested to submit a response of no more than eight (8) pages total. Two additional (2) pages may be included for capabilities statements. Responses shall be submitted in MS Word format, single-spaced, Times New Roman, 12 point font; 10 point font for graphics; margins shall be no less than one-inch. Submission of Qualification Statements and capabilities which do not follow the required formatting structure will result in non-consideration. No phone calls will be accepted. All data received in response to this Sources Sought that is marked or designated as corporate or proprietary will be fully protected from any release outside the Government. Responses to this notice should be emailed to: Jessica Fields, Contracting Officer at jessica.l.fields.civ@mail.mil. The deadline for submitting Qualification Statements in response to the sources sought notice is: 23 July 2018, not later than 2:00 pm, Arizona time. OPERATIONAL and TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS Desired capability overview: Provide on-site SME support to several major CONUS and OCONUS locations. The primary objective of the desired solution is to provide an integrated capability that will enable NETCOM to "see our network", with full 7-layer visibility of the Open Systems Interconnection model (OSI model), leveraging industry based architectural artifacts and nomenclature, to create a foundation that will give NETCOM a better understanding of connected systems, configurations, and security components, along with near real-time status. DEFINITIONS Software as a Service (SaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to use the provider's applications running on the DoDIN-A infrastructure. The applications are accessible from various client devices through either a thin client interface, such as a web browser or a program interface. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying GEMS infrastructure including servers, operating systems, storage, or even individual application capabilities, with the possible exception of limited user-specific application configuration settings. Platform as a Service (PaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the DoDIN-A infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages, libraries, services, and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying infrastructure of GEMS capabilities including, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly configuration settings for the application-hosting environment. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). The capability provided to the consumer is to provision processing, storage, and other fundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy and run arbitrary software, which can include operating systems and applications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying GEMSaaS infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage, and deployed applications; and possibly limited control of select networking components (e.g., host firewalls). SECURITY Responses should reflect an understanding of applicable DoD, Army, and commercial industry standards and policies for confidentiality and integrity to provide appropriate security controls across the integrated capability. This will include enforcement of access controls and integration with existing enterprise resources for identity, authentication, and authorization. Interested parties responding to this Request for Information are requested to provide the U.S. Army all applicable information requested below. Interested parties must possess a minimum of a SECRET security clearance in accordance with DD Form 254, Contract Security Classification Specification. A Top Secret Sensitive Compartmented Information (TS/SCI) will be required at specified facilities. Your response, capabilities statement, and relevant past performance history should describe your past experience and how you would address the following areas. Program Management (PM): Describe your experience managing a globally dispersed workforce consisting of program and project management, to include administrative support, reporting, configuration management and documentation, and Information Assurance. Continuous Modeling (Real-Time or Near Real-Time) Support (PWS C.3.0.1): Describe your ability to test out the configuration of Internet Protocol 4 and 6 (IPv4 & IPv6) -based devices, applications, or equipment that connect to a network. Sensors, Metrics, and Log Analysis Support (PWS C.3.2.11): Describe your ability to collect sensor data and how you have conducted detailed analysis on trend information and application performance. Continuous Modeling (Real-Time or Near Real-Time) Support (PWS C.3.0.1): Describe your ability to continuously model network infrastructure for each theater in CONUS and OCONUS (PWS C.3.1). Describe your experience in operationalizing and refining baseline network models in order to integrate them into the planning process. Describe your ability to collect data, build network models, generate fail-over scenarios, and perform data analyses for network capacity planning, network survivability analysis, and to-be network architectures. Describe your ability to perform capacity management and application prioritization and management. Network Topology (PWS C.3.2.12): Describe your experience and capabilities in presenting a graphical and detailed view of the monitored environment. Network Device Performance (PWS C.1.0; C.3.2): Describe how you would conduct network auditing and diagramming to support troubleshooting and change control. Describe your ability to analyze network conditions for identification of device misconfigurations, policy violations, inefficiencies, and security violations. Application Performance (PWS C.2.4; C.3.2.5): Describe your experience with application specific and service-based performance monitoring. Discuss how you would provide the ability to instrument and monitor all enterprise service components to support planning for traffic trends, technology refresh and implementation of key initiatives such as data center migrations, deployment of Unified Communications (UC), Virtual Private networks (VPNs), Video Tele-Conferences (VTCs), SharePoint communications, and DEE changes and performance. End-User Monitoring (PWS C.3.2.7): Describe how you would instrument and monitor the end-user experience (EUE) through collection of metrics on end-user systems and at key points throughout the enterprise environment. How would you support the ability to monitor and alert on Service Level Agreement (SLA) defined user-based metrics? Wide Area Network Optimization (PWS C.3.2.4): Describe how you would analyze and model Wide Area Networks (WAN) to identify and eliminate performance and latency challenges. What is your experience optimizing communications in bandwidth constrained environments? REQUIRED RESPONSE ELEMENTS Supportability and Maintainability: (PWS C.3.2.12) The capability must adhere to industry standards for software development and implementation resulting in an architecture that can be upgraded, patched, or otherwise repaired without requiring complete code baseline rewrites or significant levels of effort to instantiate small configuration changes. The capability must be maintainable as both a whole and as individual components by either government engineers or other commercial industry partners. Dependencies: (PWS C.2.4) Responses should demonstrate the Respondent's capabilities with the DISA tools identified in the draft PWS for network management intended for joint use by the Army in the JRSS as an end to end solution, avoiding duplicative capabilities. The capability should demonstrate monitoring/management from Perimeter Edge (PE) routers to all Army owned devices and applications, and interface with components of the Global Enterprise Fabric (GEF).