Request for Information and Sources Sought
Inter-Connection Point (ICP) Colocations

Background and Purpose: 

This public posting is for informational, planning, and market research purposes only and constitutes a Request for Information (RFI) and a Sources Sought Request (SSR) only for United States, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Customs and Border Protection (CBP). This announcement does not constitute a commitment, implied or otherwise that a solicitation or procurement will be issued. This is not a solicitation, Request for Proposal (RFP), or Invitation for Bids (IFB). No reimbursement will be made for any costs associated with providing information in response to this announcement or any follow-up information requests. 

All information received resulting from this RFI will be used by CBP for acquisition planning and market research purposes only. However, your response may be releasable to the public under the Freedom of information Act (FOIA), 5 U.S.C. 552, and the DHS FOIA regulation, 6 C.F.R. Chapter 1 and Part 5. If you wish CBP to consider any portion of your response as "confidential commercial information", you should clearly mark the portion as "confidential commercial information". The procedures for identifying "confidential commercial information" are set forth in the DHS FOIA regulation cited above and are available on the DHS website: http://www.dhs.gov/xfoia/editorial0579.shtm. CBP, at its discretion, may request respondents to this RFI to meet with CBP program and contracting officials and to elaborate on information in their written response. Respondents to this RFI will not be notified of any results derived from a review of the information provided. All information contained in this RFI is preliminary and is subject to revision and is not binding on the Government.

The purpose of this public posting is to give contractors the opportunity to provide information regarding their capability to provide services for CBP’s existing colocation facilities in Ashburn, VA and San Jose, CA as well as include optional services. In addition to colocation services, the Contractor shall provide high-quality inter-connectivity between ISPs and Public IaaS CSP and Government IaaS CSP connections with the capability to dynamically provision and de-provision infrastructure to meet CBP requirements.

Draft Requirement Overview: 

The Contractor shall provide colocation services to implement scalable ICPs and CAPs in up to three distinct, geographically diverse locations on the U.S. east coast, U.S. west coast, and U.S. central region. The Contractor shall provide facilities that support zero-hop connectivity, direct cross connects, Internet peering, cloud peering, traffic exchange, and Ethernet services with numerous major ISPs, CSPs, and XaaS (Everything as a Service, such as Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)) providers. 

The Contractor shall offer East, West, and Central hubs that offer Internet bypass services, where major cloud services are directly connected within their private facility network without having to traverse the Internet or multiple hops.

CBP acknowledges and agrees that the services described in this SOW will be provided within the Contractor’s data centers and such services do not require the Contractor to access, handle, manage, or control personally identifiable information (PII) or sensitive information (SI) described in this SOW (collectively PII and SI). CBP will not disclose any PII and SI to the Contractor unless and until Contractor agrees in writing to receive such PII and SI. If CBP intends to provide PII and SI to the Contractor, CBP shall inform the Contractor of same prior to disclosure.

The Contractor shall provide the space and power as specified in the BOM. CBP personnel will install hardware into the cabinets in the private cage space throughout the life of the task order.
 

Information Request: 

1.    Can Zero Hop connectivity to Cloud Service Providers be provided?

2.    Can connectivity to a Fabric interconnect that would allow CBP to quickly setup, delete and/or change virtual connections to multiple Cloud Service Providers and 3rd party collocated cages over the redundant 100Gbps connection to the interconnect? 

3.    CBP requires redundant Zero Hop low latency Layer 2 100Gbps connectivity secured with MACsec to existing DHS Headquarters and ICE collocated cages.  

4.    Can fully diverse 100Gbps connectivity secured with MACsec to our Legacy Springfield Virginia Datacenter be ordered on the