This is a REQUEST FOR INFORMATION. Reference Reference-Number-SSA-RFI-05-1002 when responding to this announcement. The Social Security Administration (SSA) is seeking responsible vendors that are capable of providing a complete Websphere monitoring solution. The user population will be up to 65,000. The vendor solution shall be capable of providing ongoing monitoring of SSA Websphere activity in both the IBM mainframe and SUN Solaris environments to determine the responsiveness of Websphere applications. It shall monitor with low overhead and provide for collection of Websphere performance metrics for analysis and bottleneck detection. The place of performance shall be SSA Headquarters in Baltimore, MD. The solution shall meet the following technical specifications: A) The solution shall be capable of operating in IBM mainframe OS/390 and Z/OS environments as well as the SUN Solaris environment; B)The solution shall be capable of operating in Websphere 5 and later environments: C)The solution shall be capable of monitoring Websphere performance with low (less than 5%) overhead; D)The solution shall be capable of instrumenting Websphere applications without source code modifications; E) The solution shall be capable of monitoring Websphere Java component performance including EJBs, servlets, JVMs, JDBCs, JSPs, classes, and methods; F) The solution shall be capable of pinpointing the cause of Websphere component performance bottlenecks; G) The solution shall be capable of providing detailed tracing of problem Websphere transactions; H)The solution shall be capable of monitoring the performance of Websphere calls to CICS Transaction Gateway (CTG), DB2, and MQSeries: I) The solution shall be capable of monitoring the performance of Websphere DB2 SQL calls; J) The solution shall be capable of displaying Websphere performance metrics in real time; K) The solution shall be capable of creating SSA-customized displays of Websphere real time performance information; L) The solution shall be capable of housing a Websphere historical performance database; M) The solution shall be capable of creating historical Websphere performance reports; N) The solution shall be capable of automatically generating appropriate Tivoli alerts to SSA Websphere personnel; O) The solution shall be compliant with Section 508 Electronic and Information Technology (EIT) Accessibility Standards. Interested vendors must provide verifiable proof in sufficient detail to demonstrate their ability to meet the SSA's requirement, see URL site http://www.ssa.gov/oag/acq/oagacq_508.htm. Vendors having the capability to meet the above requirements are invited to submit complete details. The responses shall clearly state the ability to meet the above requirements. Interested parties shall respond to this notice within 15 calendar days from date of this publication. Vendors shall provide the names and contact information of customers. References may be checked. Vendors responding shall indicate whether their services are available on the GSA Federal Supply Schedules. Pricing data may be submitted. This is not a request for proposal and the Government does not intend to pay for information submitted. Respondents will not be notified of the results of the evaluation of the data received. No contract award will be made on the basis of responses received; however, this information will be used in SSA’s assessment of capable sources. No Faxed responses. Requests for copies of a solicitation will not be honored or acknowledged. No formal solicitation is being issued at this time. Please submit electronic responses only to the contract specialist identified herein. NOTE: There is a size limit for e-mail: No submission shall be greater than 5 MB.

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