CSIR TENDER DOCUMENTATION Request for Information (RFI) Supply of information on an Enterprise Integration Solution to CSIR Date of Issue: Friday, 12 December 2014 Closing Date and Time: Friday, 16 January 2015 at 12h00 (Noon) Place: Tender box, CSIR Main Reception, Gate 3 ( North Gate) Enquiries ICT Service Centre E-mail: mjonathan@csir.co.za
TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 INTRODUCTION 3 2 BACKGROUND 3 3 INVITATION FOR RFI 4 4 CSIR UNDERTAKING 5 5 VENUE FOR RFI SUBMISSION 5 6 COSTS 5 7 DEADLINE FOR RFI SUBMISSIONS 5 8 ENQUIRIES AND CONTACT WITH THE CSIR 5 9 MEDIUM OF COMMUNICATION 5 10 RFI RESPONSE FORMAT 5 11 SOLUTION REQUIREMENTS 7 12 OTHER TERMS AND CONDITIONS 10 CSIR Request for Information Page 2 of 14
1 INTRODUCTION The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is one of the leading scientific research and technology development organisations in Africa. In partnership with national and international research and technology institutions, CSIR undertakes directed and multidisciplinary research and technology innovation that contributes to the improvement of the quality of life of South Africans. The CSIR s main site is in Pretoria while it is represented in other provinces of South Africa through regional offices. 2 BACKGROUND This RFI requests respondents to provide information on an Enterprise Integration solution for the CSIR. 2.1 OVERVIEW OF PRESENT CSIR ENVIRONMENT The following information is provided as an indicative guideline and should not be considered as comprehensive. The CSIR currently does not have an Enterprise Integration solution. We currently use an Oracle workflow engine (2002 Edition) to develop automated business processes. There is an initiative underway to replace it with a modern Business Process Management Suite. The current CSIR desktop user base is about 3000 users. The ERP system user base is about 2400 Users. Our network operating system is Novell. We use the Novel e-directory solution as a directory service for user authentication. However, some of the servers have an active directory synchronization facility. Our operating systems standards are Suse Open Enterprise Server (OES) and MS Windows, where most of our systems run on Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) version 11. The standard for our desktop operating system is Windows 7 Professional (80%) and Ubuntu (20%). Most of our users run on Windows 7 Professional. Our database standards are Oracle 11g, Windows SQL Server 2012 and MySQL 5.1. CSIR Request for Information Page 3 of 14
We use Oracle for all our Enterprise solutions and Microsoft SQL server for some enterprise and departmental based solutions. MySQL is used for non-critical solutions and applications with a small user base. Our email messaging solution is Novell Groupwise. For document management we use Novell DMS. Furthermore, we are currently implementing the Novell Vibe solution for Collaboration and Document Management. The hardware is strictly DELL servers; facilitated by VM Ware virtualized environment. 3 RFI OBJECTIVES This objective of the request for information is to: - Establish what solutions are on the market to meet our integration needs; - What these solutions are capable of; - Use the information from the RFI to prepare a comprehensive Request for Proposal for an Enterprise Integration solution. 4 BUSINESS OBJECTIVES This business objective of eventually acquiring an Integration/middle ware solution is to: - Reduced IT burden - Increased Organizational Agility - Increased Vendor Diversity Options - Increased Federation - Increased Interoperability - Increased Business and IT Alignment - Increased Return On Investment - 5 HIGH LEVEL BUSINESS NEEDS Significant reduction in silo operations where applicable Application rationalization to reduce redundancy and cost Establishment of an open standards connectivity building block for upcoming initiatives Partnership management in terms of information acquisition and sharing CSIR Request for Information Page 4 of 14
6 INVITATION FOR RFI Respondents are hereby invited for the supply information on an Enterprise Integration solution for the CSIR. 7 CSIR UNDERTAKING The CSIR undertakes not to share any information submitted in terms of this RFI with alternative suppliers. The information obtained will be used for purposes of inputs to the CSIR planning purposes. 8 VENUE FOR RFI SUBMISSION All submissions must be submitted via the CSIR tender box. All proposals must be submitted at: CSIR GATE 03 - Main Reception Area (in the Tender box) at the following address Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Meiring Naudé Road Brummeria Pretoria 9 COSTS Please note that costs are not required for this RFI. Suppliers are requested not to supply any costs as part of the RFI. 10 DEADLINE FOR RFI SUBMISSIONS RFIs shall be submitted at the e mail address mentioned above no later than 12H00 (noon) Friday, 16 th January 2015. 11 ENQUIRIES AND CONTACT WITH THE CSIR Any enquiry regarding this RFI shall be submitted by e-mail to the CSIR at mjonathan@csir.co.za with RFI title The information on a Enterprise Integration Solution as the subject. 12 MEDIUM OF COMMUNICATION All documentation/information submitted in response to this RFI must be in English 13 RFI RESPONSE FORMAT All documentation/information submitted in response to this RFI must be provided in a hard copy and a soft copy. The soft copy should be emailed before the due date to mjonathan@csir.co.za with email subject line Response to RFI for an Enterprise Integration Solution {your company name}. CSIR Request for Information Page 5 of 14
14 LIABILITY AND RESERVED RIGHTS This RFI does not commit CSIR to pay any cost incurred in the preparation or submission of any information as requested, or to procure or contract for any services. This RFI is not a tender, RFP or RFQ. No award shall be made in terms of this RFI. No conclusions will be drawn between respondents. There is no commitment from the CSIR to procure any Enterprise Integration solution from any of the suppliers. The information is only required by the CSIR for planning purposes. CSIR Request for Information Page 6 of 14
15 RFI Content Requirements In your response to this RFI please provide the following information using the exact same headings. Your number should start from 1 and follow the same numbering indent as per this paragraph. 15.1 Executive Summary The bidder must provide a brief summary of the proposal, highlighting the solution description and outlining the specific benefits to CSIR. 15.2 Solution Capability Description The respondents are requested to supply information on the following capabilities expressed in the blueprint in Figure 1; and any additional relevant information. Figure 1: Enterprise Service Bus Blueprint CSIR Request for Information Page 7 of 14
Please explain how your solution offering handles the following capabilities. See Appendix A for more details regarding capability description. Operations and Management Capability: enables reliable operation and management of the enterprise service bus. Statistics & Status Alerting SLA Rules Message Tracking Message Redelivery Endpoint Failover Load Balancing Message Throttling Logging and Reporting Configuration Management Service Registry High Availability Error Hospital Deployment Service Usage Mediation: used to implement the message flow of an ESB service. Message Transformation Reliable Messaging Caching Message Routing CSIR Request for Information Page 8 of 14
Protocol Translation Transaction Service Callout Message Validation Message Re-sequencing Pass-Through Messaging Service Composition Security: supports both the transport-level and message-level security. Authentication Authorization Encryption Security Mediation Adapters/Transport Protocols: Includes adapters for connecting services that are provided by the ESB SOAP Email Database Adapter HTTP/REST FTP/File 3 rd Party Adapter JMS EJB Custom Adapter Standards Supported Please list the integration related open standards supported by your solution. CSIR Request for Information Page 9 of 14
16 OTHER TERMS AND CONDITIONS A RFI shall not assume that information and/or documents supplied to CSIR, at any time prior to this request, are still available to CSIR, and shall consequently not make any reference to such information document in its response to this request. Only information on established technologies will be considered, concept and prototype technologies will not be considered during the planning phase. END OF RFI CSIR Request for Information Page 10 of 14
APPENDIX A ESB BLUEPRINT CAPABILITY DESCRIPTIONS Operations and Management Capability The following functional components regarding this capability enable reliable operation and management of the enterprise service bus. Statistics & Status provides the services ESB statistics, such as their number of errors, minimum and maximum response times, and number of processed messages. Alerting offers a mechanism for sending alert messages that can be sent via various channels so that existing monitoring environments can also be incorporated. SLA Rules are rules that can be defined on the basis of information from the Statistics & Status functional component. This allows SLAs to be measured and monitored. Any SLA infringements are notified using the Alerting component. Message Tracking provides the option of easily tracking messages within the ESB, and should be activated whenever required so as to minimize any associated overhead. Message Redelivery ensures that messages that aren t processed immediately are automatically resent after a pre-defined period of time. Endpoint Failover enables the option of specifying an alternate service provider that is automatically called whenever the primary service provider is not available. Load Balancing allows several service endpoints to be listed for one logical service provider endpoint. It uses redundant service implementations that are called alternately for each request according to a defined strategy, which can be round-robin or according to message priority or load dependency. Message Throttling makes it possible to define a maximum number of messages per unit of time for a service endpoint that should be sent to the service provider. It prevents the service provider from being overloaded at peak times by buffering messages that lie over the threshold in a queue in the ESB. Logging & Reporting allows messages to be logged and then easily displayed at a later time. It can also provide functional auditing. CSIR Request for Information Page 11 of 14
Configuration Management enables secure configuration adjustments to the ESB on an operational system, while constantly upholding the integrity of the configuration. Artifacts and attributes can be adapted and replaced during operation. A history of the changes can also be kept so that an ESB service can be rolled back to an earlier status at any time. Service Registry offers the option of registering and managing services on the ESB. High Availability ensures that the services provided by the ESB are failsafe, regardless of the status of the server on which it is operated. The Error Hospital is the destination for the messages that can t be processed after multiple redelivery attempts, where they can be viewed, corrected if necessary, and reprocessed. Deployment offers the option of installing services automatically on the ESB. Mediation Contains the functional components that are used to implement the message flow of an ESB service. Message Transformation enables conversion from one message format to another that is applicable to text and binary messages as well as XML formats. In addition, there is also the option of converting from text, such as the CSV format, to XML and vice versa. Reliable Messaging is the support of reliable message transfer using queuing or WS* standards, such as WS-ReliableMessaging. Caching provides the option of saving results from a service call in a cache, so that each subsequent call returning the same result can be answered from the cache without calling the service again. Message Routing allows messages to be forwarded to a particular service endpoint depending on their content. Protocol Translation means the possibility of switching from a certain communication protocol to a different one without any programming effort, such as from TCP/IP to HTTP. Transaction allows ESBs offer transactional integrity through message processing. The persistent queues that the ESB uses to support Reliable Messaging generally work as transactional data sources, and can therefore participate in heterogeneous transactions. CSIR Request for Information Page 12 of 14
Service Callout offers the option of accessing other services within a message flow in the ESB, such as to enhance a message. A service may be a Web service but the ESB can conceivably enable program code that s installed locally on the ESB to be called directly, such as a Java class method. Message Validation ensure that messages are valid. In the case of XML, this means that the message contains well-defined XML and corresponds to a certain XML schema or WSDL. Message Re-sequencing allows a flow of messages that belong together but aren t in the correct order to be re-sequenced. In a message-oriented solution with parallel processing of messages, the sequence in which the messages enter the ESB can be lost. Pass-Through Messaging provides efficient forwarding of messages by the ESB. This is useful if the ESB is to be used for service virtualization and the messages are forwarded from the service consumer to the service provider unchanged. Security Supports both the transport-level and message-level security using a number of components. Authentication authenticates service consumers when they access the service in the ESB and verifies ESB authentication for the service provider. Authorization provides an authorization system for services that can often be configured via XACML to be assigned to users or roles. Security Mediation provides support for interactions that communicate outside of security domains by converting credentials from one domain to the corresponding credentials of the other domain. Encryption/Decryption supports the encryption and decryption of the content of a message. Adapters/Transport Includes adapters for connecting services that are provided by the ESB via the Service Hosting module. The ESB can be assumed to provide a set of adapters from the ground up, and also has the option for customers or third-party developers to develop additional adapters for customerspecific requirements. Service Hosting Capability This capability allows services to be installed and operated directly on the ESB and is usually required if the ESB is based on an application server. Service Container provides one or more CSIR Request for Information Page 13 of 14
containers in which the services are installed and service lifecycles managed. It offers the service access to technical cross-sectional functions, such as transactions and security. The Component Model provides an abstract component model, such as Java EJB, Java Spring Framework, or Microsoft COM+, on the basis on which the services are created. CSIR Request for Information Page 14 of 14