Item Number 1 2 Vendor Question Are you already requesting this information from the manufactures directly? What if one manufacture can do some of what you need, and another can do the other part of what you need? Is that expectable? The RFI was to open to the public. FIU Response 3 4 5 What is the budget and timeline for deployment of this cloud base services? List of the application which FIU have termed as web along with the number of users for all the application mentioned in the RFI. IS FIU wanting vendor responses to be specific to IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service)? Or should responses include PaaS and SaaS also? This is an RFI and not a RFQ or ITN. Information gathered will lead to possible RFQ/ITN. The critical web applications are the following: PeopleSoft,ISIM,SharePoint,General Web Hosting (IIS Apache) and various Enterprise level Web based applications. The estimated number of users for the above is 55K (Students), 10K (Faculty,Staff) and 10K (Misc Users (Alumni,Vendors,Future Students). For a total of 75K This is a general RFI for all proposed solutions. 6 7 Is there a requirement for the Cloud Services provider to support the PeopleSoft application also? If so, please provide sizing and support requirements. What is the approximate size of the Oracle database? It is not a requirement but should offered if available. 2 Terabytes (Production instance) Multiple copies of Production used for test,dev and reporting (in excess of 30 Terabytes) 8 Are there other applications that you envision may move to the cloud over time besides Oracle/Peoplesoft? Do these other applications have different architectures? 9 Should this question be answered with respect to Cloud IaaS or are there other models of Cloud that should be discussed such as SaaS For all services. and PaaS? 10 Does FIU want the cloud provider to provide support through the application layer for applications, database and web besides just infrastructure (network, servers, storage) support? Does FIU desire a All options. fully managed service for those functions moved to the cloud? Or is FIU interested in hearing about all such options? Please provide a brief description on how FIU conducts its DR tests Depends on the system. There are simulation testing where failover is conducted as well as tabletop exercises. Simulated DR tests are performed on production 11 and what would be expected of the Cloud Services provider environments using various failover methods from FIU's production site to its current DR site (geographically different from its production site). Peoplesoft test are conducted twice a year. Other system, at least once per year. These tests may or may not be performed concurrently. The expectation is that the Cloud Services provider to offer similar resources to fullfill the above testing schedule. 12 How many applications are tested? We have tested about 5 10 critical applications. Our goal is to test all 122 environments within the next year or so. 13 What types of applications are they (please provide names) Some of our critical applications are PeopleSoft,ISIM,SharePoint,ImageNow, General Web Hosting (IIS Apache),various Enterprise level Web based applications, and Centralized Authentication platforms to name a few. 14 How many data centers are included in the testing? Or are they tested 2 Data Centers. One in Miami and the other in Tallahasse. only campus wide? 15 How many times per year are the test performed (monthly, quarterly, semi annually) Semi annual at minimum 16 Is FIU looking for the Cloud provider to maintain and patch Oracle? If you offer the ability to maintain/patch Oracle please describe. Does FIU own the Oracle licenses? FIU currently owns Oracle licenses for its environments.
17 Can you please advise when the ITN is anticipated to be released? The effort in developing an ITN/RFQ will be assessed after completing the RFI process. 18 Do you have an estimated project cost determined at this point? The effort in developing an ITN/RFQ will be assessed after completing the RFI process. 19 What funding source will be secured to fund the procurement? Florida International University is public University in Miami. 20 I didn t see any technical specifications in the document. Do you have The purpose of the Request of Information (RFI) is to gather solutions and offerings by Cloud vendors. As such FIU will assess the data collected and determine next any additional information regarding the environment our solution steps in its Cloud support strategy. would need to support? Will any advantage be given to an MWBE owned business? This is not bid but an Request for Information (RFI). The department put the RFI out for the purpose of gathering information to develop a potential ITN. Our bid specs say the following SBME. We are not allowed to do set asides or give extra points for Minority Owned Business due to the One Florida initiative that was put in place by Governor Bush at the time. We do encourage the participation of Minority Owned Firms. Small Business Minority Enterprise (SMBE) Reporting It is FIU s policy (consistent with state and federal law) to optimize opportunities for business contracting with small, minority and disadvantaged business enterprises in the areas of commodities, construction, contractual services, and architectural and engineering services. Vendors are likewise encouraged to use the small, minority and disadvantaged business enterprises and to have a business diversity program in place. The Successful Vendor shall report all minority subcontractors, identifying the Name, Address, Type of Certification and Dollar Amount to FIU with each invoice submitted for payment. For more information on becoming a State of Florida Certified Minority Business (CMBE), to request certification or to locate CMBEs, please contact the Office of Supplier Diversity, Department of Management Services at (850) 487 0915. This is not bid but an Request for Information (RFI). The department put the RFI out for the purpose of gathering information to develop a potential ITN. Our bid specs say the following SBME. We are not allowed to do set asides or give extra points for Minority Owned Business due to the One Florida initiative that was put in place by Governor Bush at the time. We do encourage the participation of Minority Owned Firms. 21 Small Business Minority Enterprise (SMBE) Reporting It is FIU s policy (consistent with state and federal law) to optimize opportunities for business contracting with small, minority and disadvantaged business enterprises in the areas of commodities, construction, contractual services, and architectural and engineering services. Vendors are likewise encouraged to use the small, minority and disadvantaged business enterprises and to have a business diversity program in place. The Successful Vendor shall report all minority subcontractors, identifying the Name, Address, Type of Certification and Dollar Amount to FIU with each invoice submitted for payment. For more information on becoming a State of Florida Certified Minority Business (CMBE), to request certification or to locate CMBEs, please contact the Office of Supplier Diversity, Department of Management Services at (850) 487 0915. This is not bid but an Request for Information (RFI). The department put the RFI out for the purpose of gathering information to develop a potential ITN. Our bid specs say the following SBME. We are not allowed to do set asides or give extra points for Minority Owned Business due to the One Florida initiative that was put in place by Governor Bush at the time. We do encourage the participation of Minority Owned Firms.Small Business Minority Enterprise (SMBE) Reporting It is FIU s policy (consistent with state and federal law) to optimize opportunities for business contracting with small, minority and disadvantaged business enterprises in the areas of commodities, construction, contractual services, and architectural and engineering services. Vendors are likewise encouraged to use the small, minority and disadvantaged business enterprises and to have a business diversity program in place. The Successful Vendor shall report all minority subcontractors, identifying the Name, Address, Type of Certification and Dollar Amount to FIU with each invoice submitted for payment. For more information on becoming a State of Florida Certified Minority Business (CMBE), to request certification or to locate CMBEs, please contact the Office of Supplier Diversity, Department of Management Services at (850) 487 0915. 22 Application RPO and RTO It varies per environment.
23 24 25 Please provide the technical requirements on each of the following points: a. CPU b. Memory c. Storage d. Bandwidth e. Data Transfers/Synchronization to/from the cloud on node level and storage level f. Virtual Images g. Import and Export Images h. Test image i. Network/IP j. Integration k. Access l. Customer Support Oth Do you have any systems that need to be covered by this RFI that are not Intel (x86/x64) microprocessor based (i.e. IBM AS/400 or mainframe systems)? What operating systems are the covered systems running today other than Microsoft Windows and various Linux distributions (if any)? This information will be provided as part of a future Request for Quote or Invitation to Negotiate. The purpose of the Request of Information (RFI) is to gather solutions and offerings by Cloud vendors. As such FIU will assess the data collected and determine next steps in its Cloud support strategy. We have RISC and SPARC Servers. We have servers running AIX and Solaris. 26 Which Linux distributions are run on the covered systems? We run Redhat Linux, UBUNTU,CENTOS 27 Are you seeking a vendor to handle all cloud services outlined in the RFI, or will you consider responses from vendors that only provide All solutions will be considered. certain targeted Cloud Services 28 Is the objective of this RFI to find a provider for the disaster recovery of your current PeopleSoft implementation or to provide both a production and disaster recovery services for this implementation? Possible combination. Please provide details on geographical locations. 29 30 Please describe either your current or planned environment, including physical or virtual infrastructure (server, storage, and network configuration) requirements. Question 5 reads, how do you ensure privacy and encryption? Could you be more specific? There are many ways to ensure privacy from data center facilities to application infrastructure the same holds true for encryption, in transit or at rest what are the requirements. Not needed as part of the RFI. Vendor must provide all of their current methods for securing data. 31 What is the expected Internet bandwidth utilization? Unknown at this time. Please provide your cost structure for bandwidth services. Would FIU like backup costs associated with the environment included 32 in the pricing? If so what are the requirements associated with this Yes offsite and please provide details on geographical locations. service, onsite offsite, etc? Item (j) references integration pricing, would you please explain what 33 As an example, provide pricing for 3rd party applications that integrate with other core services. you are looking for here?
34 Please explain or clarify the question pertaining to if we have network or partner providers that run on top of our cloud services. The nature of the question was to determine if you utilize other cloud provider solutions as part of your services and Service Level Agreements. 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 What needs does FIU have in the area of running scripts across servers For example Enterprise Scheduler or any other similar software that runs across multiple servers. (item 10)? Will the network look like what we have for FIU today, or will we need We would consider all options for Network Space Management. to provide a firewall and address space? Will we be provided the questions asked and responses provided that Yes however there will be no reference to which vendors posed what questions. are submitted by other vendors? Is FIU focused on just its PeopleSoft applications for this RFI? Are there 3rd party ancillary applications associated with PeopleSoft that No. would also have to be hosted due to dependencies with PeopleSoft? Are there non PeopleSoft applications that might be of interest as well? Is FIU interested in cloud or hosted services for all of its PeopleSoft environments or only as a Disaster Recovery service? Page 1 has a reference to looking for services that "will address the Both. disaster recovery resiliency." Does FIU have business owner requirements related to required Service Level Agreements regarding application availability, Yes application performance, disaster recovery, etc.? What database platform and version is FIU currently running for Oracle 11 on AIX PeopleSoft? What PHO (primary hours of operation) is FIU expecting for support? 24x7x365 What is the anticipated release date for an Invitation to Negotiate The effort in developing an ITN/RFQ will be assessed after completing the RFI process. (ITN)? What are some of the key aspects that FIU seeks to address in its Cost and support efficiencies strategy for operational staffing? What is the current structure of FIU s operational staff, and what are their capabilities (i.e., roles and responsibilities, capabilities to handle Look at it.fiu.edu and locate the organizational chart file program management of one or more Cloud providers or IT hosting providers, etc.)? What is FIU s openness to moving toward a managed services model whereby IT capability is delivered as a service no matter the FIU is receptive to the idea. It should be included in the final response. environment (e.g., on premise cloud, hosted cloud, or some other arrangement)? What elements does FIU currently consider in its total cost of ownership (TCO) calculations for its information technology Elements to consider (but no limited to) are: Network, Network Security, Storage, Virtual Environments, Databases, Application hosting. investment decisions? Please describe any automated trouble ticketing/incident Remedy 8.1 management system FIU may be using currently, including FIU s An array of (Division of IT only) Internal ticketing systems created within FIU's SharePoint site. intentions and ability to enable vendors to interface with that system The integration with vendors and FIU's automated trouble tickets can be considered. in a machine to machine (M2M) manner
49 50 51 52 53 The RFI cover page states that FIU seeks a solution for the disaster recovery function of PeopleSoft. The text found on page 3, however, Outsourced/hosted solutions should contain a level of DR functionality. As such FIU expects the vendor to demonstrate that their hosted service model has a level of seems to indicate that FIU seeks a solution that outsources production redundancy and resiliency built in it. Such information should be included in the final response. to the cloud. Would FIU please clarify its request? Would FIU prefer a cloud based solution on or off its own premises? FIU will consider both. If its preference is for an on premise solution, would FIU provide campus network access and security stack? As part of this RFI, FIU will not provide such information. However during future RFQ/ITN, such information may be provided. Does FIU have space, power, and cooling to support an on premise cloud solution? FIU is not considering on premise solutions for DR only. If its preference is for an off premise solution, would FIU configure and maintain wide area networking (WAN) access to a colocation facility, or would this be the cloud provider s responsibility? FIU is receptive to both ideas. 54 55 Would FIU want to leverage an SLA based networking agreement for WAN services? Would FIU be open to a hybrid cloud model to support local cloud services, with DR/COOP provided in a remote colocation facility? Yes Yes 56 Does FIU have a preference as to which hypervisor(s) underlies the cloud offerings proposed under this ITN request? This is not an ITN request. Provide what options are available in your final response. 57 What Applications and version? As it relates to PeopleSoft, we have current versions of Campus Solutions, Human Resources, Financials and Interaction Hub. 58 What PeopleTools versions? 8.53 59 How many power users? 50 60 How many self service users? Estimated 75K 61 What Database platform? Oracle 11 on AIX 62 What are the production DB sizes for each? 2 Terabytes (Production instance) Multiple copies of Production used for test,dev and reporting (in excess of 30 Terabytes) 63 Are you running your servers in a virtualized environment? a. If so, what percent (%) of your environment is virtualized? b. Are you using VMware, Hyper V, Citrix, etc? Running physical and virtualized servers. Approximately 80% virtualized. VMWare,Hyper V and RHEV 64 How many servers do you have in your environment? In excess of 400 physical servers 65 How much data are your currently using today and what s your projected data growth rate? Approximately 500 Terabytes for storage 66 How are you currently connecting to your storage (i.e. DAS, iscsi, FC)? NAS,FC,DAS,iSCSI 67 What is the current infrastructure 1G, 10G or FC? For storage 1G,10G and FC are being used. 68 Are you replicating data now or do you plan to in the future? We are currently replicating data and will continue to do so. 69 Do you have a preference on CapEx or an OpEx model for the future IT FIU is receptive to both ideas. Cloud Services? 70 Have you standardized your existing infrastructure (i.e. manufacturer for route/switch, storage, etc. )? No, FIU's infrastructure has several vendor supported solutions. 71 Which applications are on virtual servers and which ones are on physical servers? Specifics will be provided at a future RFQ/ITN effort.
72 73 What backup methodology and replication and disaster recovery tools TSM,EVAULT,DPM as well storage and application level synchronization. are you currently using? Would you please confirm the version you are running for People Soft Oracle 11 on AIX Database and Oracle and any other software pertinent for this RFI. PeopleSoft Tools 8.53