Application Performance Monitoring/Management (APM) Request for Information (RFI) 28198-CH Issued: March 30, 2015 Responses Due: May 12, 2015 This is not a bid or proposal. This Request for Information (RFI) is issued solely for information and planning purposes, and does not constitute a solicitation. Responses to the RFI will not be returned. Responses to this RFI are not an offer and cannot be accepted by the State to form a binding contract. Questions concerning this RFI should be directed via email to: cort.hoel@wisconsin.gov
I. Purpose of the Request for Information The Wisconsin Department of Administration, State Bureau of Procurement on behalf of the Division of Enterprise Technology (DET) is releasing this Request for Information (RFI) in order to solicit responses for an application performance management product. Application Performance Management (APM) solutions monitor the availability and performance of software applications and provide diagnostic information to help maintain SLA levels. The main purpose of the RFI is to obtain current, detailed information regarding application performance offerings to help formulate an organizational strategy and operational plan around the implementation of APM. Goals include: Provide increased visibility and analytic data to technicians and managers in terms of application performance Provide prompt notification when an application needs attention Reduce the time and improve technicians ability to manage applications change the technicians world from a reactive environment to a proactive environment Change our technician s focus from nuts and bolts systems management, towards supporting our customers need to build and maintain their business applications Key business drivers for DET include simplified management of application monitoring, significant overall cost savings, and scalability. Keys to success include: Technicians will spend their time working with their customers to manage application availability, service levels, incidents and problems, capacity, performance levels, releases, assets, and configurations, rather than configuring APM software Provide a methodology for integrating APM software into existing ticket management Ease of use for both business leaders and technical staff Varying levels of APM monitoring to meet different needs, from basic up/down for low demand websites, critical monitoring of enterprise applications, and possibly deep dive component monitoring for a small number of in house applications End to End monitoring The information gained from this RFI may be used in the development of a competitive procurement leading to the selection of an APM product. At this time, your firm is invited to submit responses to the questions that follow and provide the State with what you feel are the most important technical and operational issues for the State to consider when determining our future strategy.
II. Submitting a Response Interested vendors should submit answers to the questions in Section IV and any additional material necessary to understand the response. The State is not interested in receiving elaborate promotional or advertising material; such materials will not be reviewed or considered. Respondents are solely responsible for all expenses associated with responding to this RFI. Questions and responses to this RFI may be submitted electronically via email to: cort.hoel@wisconsin.gov. III. High Level Infrastructure Background DET manages the state's information technology (IT) assets and uses technology to improve government efficiency and service delivery. It provides computer services to state agencies and operates the statewide voice, data and video telecommunications network. In consultation with business and IT managers from state agencies and local governments, the division develops strategies, policies and standards for cross-agency and multi-jurisdictional use of IT resources. The division provides centralized security, training, research, and print and mail services to other state agencies and provides statewide computer systems for district attorneys. Through the Geographic Information Office, the division coordinates Wisconsin's geospatial information activities and provides geographic information systems (GIS) services to state agencies, service organizations and local governments. DET provides infrastructure and application support, development, architecture, and engineering to 72 state agencies and boards. The current footprint contains over 3200 network routers and switches, over 3100 virtual servers, over 330 physical servers, IBM EC12 mainframes, private clouds, and SANS from different vendors both in centralized data centers and in remote locations across the State of Wisconsin. Applications hosted and supported by DET are used by both state employees and citizens throughout the State of Wisconsin. IV. Application performance management Services Questions A. Company Information 1) Introduce your organization (e.g., parent, age, size, number of customers, offices, number of employees, etc.) Please include ownership structure. 2) Identify contact name(s) and information for questions concerning information and products and services discussed in the RFI Response. 3) List any relevant web sites for your company and its offerings.
4) Describe your product and services strategies, including markets served. Include information regarding any strategic partnerships or alliances with other technology or service vendors. 5) Identify major customers that use your products/services and are willing to serve as a reference. Please provide the appropriate contact information including telephone numbers and emails. We are especially interested in state governments. B. High Level Technical Information 1) Provide technical specifications for your products and services. 2) List any other software that is required to use your system (i.e., web browsers, browser plug-ins, system extensions, software agents, databases, third party software, etc.) 3) Provide a product profile for your recommended product including the following: a. Product name. b. Product description and capabilities. c. Number of government entities using your product. d. Product maintenance cycles for this product. 4) Clearly specify any other vendor products with which your product can integrate. 5) Describe Service Level Agreements/Service Level Expectations surrounding your hardware and software products. 6) Describe your testing procedures prior to changes being implemented. 7) Explain your hardware and software support models, and the support process. Include details on local support options and whether support is provided 24x7. 8) Describe how your product keeps confidential information protected. 9) If your product is not a single-stack (one vendor for all pieces), identify the partners and describe how your partnerships will be maintained, evaluated, and changed. 10) Identify your different APM offerings, and what differentiates each offering. 11) Identify how your different modules integrate and interact with each other. 12) List and describe which software is standard and which software is available as optional. 13) Given the fluidity of the APM landscape please provide a roadmap of components that you are planning to add to your APM offerings and a loose framework of what will be incorporated into existing licenses vs what will be additional purchases.
C. Technology Specific Information 1) Product Capabilities / Features a. Describe the multi-tenancy capabilities of your product. b. Describe the alerting and notification features of your product. c. Describe how your product integrates with existing customer ticketing systems. d. Describe how your product works in a multi-cloud environment (extend from the Enterprise Private Cloud to a Provider Cloud). e. Describe how enterprise applications such as email and directory services are discovered and monitored. f. If your product supports IBM Z/OS mainframe applications please describe these capabilities. g. Describe the SAAS and cloud monitoring capabilities of your product. h. Describe the Storage Area Network monitoring capabilities of your product. i. End User Experience Monitoring i. Describe the End User Experience solution in your product. ii. Provide details as to how measurements for the end user experience are obtained. iii. If additional services, modules or components are needed for end user experience monitoring please describe them. j. Application Architecture Discovery i. Describe how your product integrates with existing infrastructure monitoring tools ii. Describe the resource impact that your product has on infrastructure iii. Describe how your product discovers what components are relevant for application performance iv. Describe how information regarding infrastructure and components are displayed for an application v. Describe the applications that have been testing and certified on your product. k. User-Defined Transaction Profiling i. Describe how technical support staff can use your product to troubleshoot issues as needed ii. Describe how your product addresses simplicity and streamlined support. iii. Describe how the tools or modules in your product integrate in terms of response time and alerting functions
l. Component Deep-Dive Monitoring i. Describe your component deep dive capabilities ii. Describe how your product gathers component information iii. Describe the network and resource impact that your product may have on applications. m. Analytics i. Describe the capacity planning tools in your product. ii. List and describe the tracking and reporting capabilities of your product iii. Describe how your metrics can be exported to different databases and/or reporting packages. 2) Operational information a. Describe what operating systems software is supported and define your operating system software support parameters. b. Describe the virtualization/hypervisor technologies supported in your product. c. Define your virtualization software support parameters. d. If your product utilizes software agents please describe what additional capabilities these introduce and if they are mandatory. e. Provide details on the customers ability to modify or customize your product. f. Describe what training is needed for end users to begin using your product. g. Describe the disaster recovery and high availability features of your product in terms of site redundancy, hot site failover, data mirroring, etc. h. Describe your products fault detection and call home features, for both hardware and software. i. Describe fault tolerance, redundancy, self-diagnosing, self-correcting, and selfrecoverability of your product, both hardware and software. j. Describe how new and emerging technologies are integrated into your product, and at what point in the lifecycle. k. Describe the processes your organization uses to ensure that new technologies, code upgrades, etc., which may be incorporated into your product, will not impact existing applications. 3) Implementation a. Describe how the proposed product is packaged, tested, and implemented. b. Describe what training is required for administrators to implement your product. c. Describe how your organization sizes the different models for your customers, both at initial installation and for later upgrades. d. Provide details on whether your product is customer, partner, or vendor installed, configured and maintained. e. Provide details on the typical deployment including length of time from ordering through deployment. f. Describe, in a typical setup, which components and support activities are customer managed versus vendor managed.
g. Describe the process for migrating off of your product. h. Describe how your product prevents or mitigates being locked into a single vendor. 4) Capacity and Scalability a. Describe the overall capacity of your product b. Describe how your product scales with additional applications c. Describe the different scales of monitoring available per application within your product 5) Networking a. Describe the overall networking infrastructure of your product. b. Depict the overall network design within your product. c. Describe the high availability options with your networking component. 6) Database a. Describe the overall database infrastructure of your product. b. Depict the overall database design within your product. c. Describe the high availability options with your database component. D. End User Guide and Configuration Guide Provide your End User Guide and Configuration Guide as part of your response package to help us understand your product offering. E. Product Terms and Conditions Provide the company terms and conditions typically used for this product offering. F. Pricing and Licensing Structure Please respond with estimated pricing for your products and services, including information on each platform that is currently available or due for release within the next six months to three years. These figures will be used to analyze general pricing strategies and will not necessarily reflect the State s requirements since they are yet to be determined. 1. Provide Product license and pricing structure information, including each type of licensing available and the benefit of choosing a particular licensing and pricing structure. 2. List all components that are licensed, the license terms, and how system upgrades/downgrades affect licensure. 3. Disclose whether your product or product is available through resellers on the State of Wisconsin procurement contract.
4. What are the costs associated with software licensing (if any)? Please break out any system vs. user license costs. 5. What volume/quantity/size discounts are available? 6. What are the costs associated with maintenance/support? 7. What are the costs for implementation services? 8. What are the costs associated with any available administrator training? 9. Are there multiple tiers of pricing based on specific application needs? 10. Please describe the pricing structure for software agents if used.