SOURCES SOUGHT
D -- Request for Information - VOIP
- Notice Date
- 3/14/2006
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 517110
— Wired Telecommunications Carriers
- Contracting Office
- Department of Justice, Bureau of Prisons, Acquisitions Branch, 320 First Street, NW, Washington, DC, 20534
- ZIP Code
- 20534
- Solicitation Number
- RFI-001-2006
- Response Due
- 3/29/2006
- Archive Date
- 4/13/2006
- Description
- Request for Information for Voice Over Internet Protocol Federal Bureau of Prisons The Federal Bureau of Prisons? is seeking information relating to Internet Protocol (IP) telephony systems in order to develop a viable and comprehensive solution to specific telephony needs. The information should be an intelligent IP Infrastructure based on high availability, scalability, flexible deployment options and applications. It is important to understand that the Federal Bureau of Prisons? is not requesting information about a particular system, but is interested in the provider?s philosophy towards IP Telephony, and the IP Telephony systems that would be suggested and supported. The Federal Bureau of Prisons? is issuing this Request for Information to conduct market research to gather information regarding IP Telephony systems and applications that meet our business requirements. The provider should include additional information on the IP Telephony systems and applications they support. This information would be based on the opinion of the provider to determine those specifications that would be of interest to Federal Bureau of Prisons?. Please consider the following information in responding to this market research inquiry: 1.1 Vendor Vision and Experience ? Describe your vision regarding the future of Internet technologies. ? Do you have a clear vision concerning the convergence of voice, video, and data in business communications systems? ? Are you committed to open industry standards? Will you be an active participant in proposing new standards to help advance the industry? List examples. ? Provide 3 or more large IP communication reference accounts. 1.2 System Architecture and Infrastructure ? Do you offer a comprehensive convergence architecture that is based on open industry standards? Is it a distributed architecture that is flexible and highly scaleable? Please provide a list of standards you can support. ? What kind of Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms do you use, i.e., how do you tag packets to guarantee there will be no degradation of service for voice, video, or data on the network? How does your proposal support end to end QoS? In a converged network supporting voice, broadcast video, interactive video (such as H.323) and data, how are QoS issues resolved? ? Is toll bypass supported? ? How do you manage toll bypass? ? Is Automatic Alternate Routing offered to re-route calls from the WAN to the PSTN? Under what conditions is it invoked (wide area network (WAN) failure, Call Admission Control, congestion, etc.)? ? Can you provide easy addressing of IP phones without having to change the addressing scheme of the existing IP data network? ? Can IP phones share existing Ethernet ports with data devices, or do the IP phones require additional Ethernet ports be added by the customer to support voice? Are the IP phones ?hub based? or ?switch based?? ? If the IP phones can share the Ethernet connection, how do you maintain QoS for voice and data on the same connections? ? Do you support a wide variety of analog and digital gateway products for connectivity to the public-switched telephone network (PSTN)? ? Are these gateways fully interoperable with the PSTN and legacy time division multiplexing (TDM) networks? ? Do you support H.323-compliant gateways provided by other manufacturers? ? Do you propose special purpose gateways, or can we upgrade our existing routers and LAN switches to support gateway functionality? 1.3 Call Processing System Hardware and Software ? Is your hardware platform based on a server-class system that is highly reliable, available and robust? What redundancy options are available and what other mechanisms do you use to provide for fault tolerance in a distributed server environment? Please delineate all hot-swappable components in the solution. ? Does the hardware and software platform easily scale from small to very large systems sizes? What is required to scale from 100 users to over 30,000 users? ? Is the system software based on support for industry standards, such as H.323, G.711, G.729, MGCP, 802.1p and 802.1q, and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)? ? Does your system provide industry standard Computer telephony Integration (CTI) interfaces, such as Telephony Application Programming Interface (TAPI) and Java Telephony Application Programming Interface (JTAPI)? ? Does the Call Processing Server support the basic feature set of a typical Private Branch Exchange (PBX)? ? Does the Call Processing Server support video telephony? 1.4 System Management Tools ? Can the system be administered through a standard internet browser? Can system administration be done either locally or remotely? ? Is the system secure from unauthorized access? How is security provided for the administration tools? ? Does the system provide for local and remote diagnostics? ? What diagnostic tools are available, for example, to run simulated call flows or call loads? ? What diagnostic reports are available? Are they easy to access and easy to understand? ? Are there any methods for directly accessing the system databases? For example, Structured Query Language (SQL) queries or an AVVID XML Layer (AXL)/Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) interface? ? Are the management tools easy to use and intuitive? 1.5 Client Devices ? Do you offer a broad variety of IP phones, including an IP softphone? ? Are the displays on the IP phones pixel-based (graphical) or character-based? Can the displays on the IP phones show information in a standard web browser format? ? Do you offer a PC-based attendant console? ? Can you support industry standard analog devices, such as 2500 sets, fax ports, modems, etc? ? Are the IP phones supported on standard Ethernet connections? ? Do the IP phones have a built-in 10/100 Ethernet switch that allows the user to plug a PC into the IP phone and support both devices on one Ethernet connection? ? Do any of the IP phones have Gigabit Ethernet switch ports? ? Do the phones or client software support H.323 video conferencing? ? When will SIP phones be supported? Are there differences in the features supported by your SIP phones compared to other standard SIP phones? ? Is your system fully interoperable with industry standard SIP phones? If not presently, is SIP support on the product roadmap? What will be required in terms of hardware and/or software upgrades in the future to add SIP support? 1.6 Security ? Please describe in detail any data infrastructure (L2/L3) security features you can provide to mitigate snooping attacks, DoS attacks, viruses and worms. ? What mechanisms are available to ensure authentication of endpoints? ? What mechanisms are available to ensure that the clients are protected from disabling firmware loads? ? Does the system support media encryption? If so, what endpoints are capable of media encryption? Does media encryption extend to the gateways? ? Does the system support signaling encryption? ? Does the management system support Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) for secure management access? ? What end-to-end security encryption is used? ? What encryption standards do you support? ? What specific things have been done to harden the operating system? To harden the call control application? To harden the IP phones? ? Are any intrusion prevention applications running on the call controllers or the applications servers? If so, please describe their functionality in detail. ? What specific features are in place to prevent toll fraud? ? Are there any special management tools for monitoring and detecting security intrusions or attacks? 1.7 Unified Messaging ? Is the system a true ?unified messaging? solution where voice, fax and e-mail are stored on a common message store? ? Is the system scalable from small/medium business to large enterprise? ? With which IP PBX systems is the application interoperable? ? Does the unified messaging system support industry standards (MS Exchange, Novell GroupWise, IMAP, POP3, Fax 3 and 4, etc.)? ? Does the unified messaging system emulate the user interfaces of most popular voice mail systems? 1.8 IP Contact Center ? Can you provide a complete call center solution set that is scalable from a single site to a networked application? ? Does the networked call center support pre-routing and post-routing? ? Are remote agents supported? ? Is skills-based routing available? ? Does the call center solution provide a complete set of pre-defined reports? Will we be able to create our own custom reports? Is the raw data from the call center application exportable in a standard format so that we can perform data analysis on another application? ? Does the call center system provide real-time as well as historical statistics? ? Is an IP-based Interactive Voice Response (IVR) available? ? Is an IP-based automated attendant application available? ? Does the IP Contact Center solution support video conferencing? 1.9 Collaboration Applications ? Do you offer a complete rich-media conferencing solution that seamlessly integrates voice, video and Web conferencing capabilities? ? What deployment options are available? Can the solution be on-premise at the enterprise? Is there a hosted option? ? How does the product enable a secure conferencing environment? Please explain all security measures that are incorporated to prevent unauthorized access, toll fraud, etc. ? What is the maximum port capacity of a single multi-media conferencing system? Can multiple systems be clustered to achieve higher capacity? If so, what is the maximum port capacity of a clustered system? ? Is Web conferencing available? What additional components are required to enable Web conferencing? ? What additional components are required to enable video conferencing? ? Is Microsoft Outlook used to schedule and attend meetings? If not, what is? ? Is Lotus Notes supported? ? Is Novell GroupWise supported? ? Is the user interface easy to use and intuitive? 1.10 IP Video ? Can you provide video gateways to interoperate with legacy ISDN devices (H.320 or H.323)? ? Which video terminal endpoints do you support (ex., Tandberg, Polycom)? ? Do you offer video multi-point conferencing solutions? 1.11 Call Accounting ? Does the system provide Call Detail Records (CDR)? ? Do you provide a call accounting package? ? What third party CDR packages are approved for this system? ? Does the system produce call quality records for QoS analysis? 1.12 Migration Strategy ? Can you support a phased migration from legacy TDM equipment, such as PBXs, voice mail systems, and digital phone to an IP-based telephony environment? ? Do you have a clear understanding of interoperability issues and the experience to solve them in a migration strategy? ? Does the system support Q.Sig? If so, what features are supported? ? Does the system support Digital Private Network Signaling System (DPNSS)? If so, what features are supported? ? Please provide documentation on best practices of migration.
- Place of Performance
- Address: Federal Bureau of Prisons, National Acquisitions Section, 320 First Street, N.W., Rm 5006, Washington, DC
- Zip Code: 20534
- Zip Code: 20534
- Record
- SN01005684-W 20060316/060314211833 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
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