70--Request For Information Alternatives to Salesforce

The Department of Veterans Affairs seeks to identify competitive products and strategies that could be implemented as alternatives to the technologies identified herein. This effort does not indicate VA will move to an alternate technology but only that VA is investigating viability, costs, and impacts associated with specific alternate technologies. To be clear, VA is not seeking proposals but only identification of alternate products, impacts, and market trends. Responses should be no longer than 10 pages. For this RFI, VA has broken apart the comprehensive Salesforce licensing agreement into key functional areas. VA does not expect comprehensive responses so respondents should address only the area or area s for which they can offer meaningful insight. All of these products are hosted in a FedRAMP certified (Moderate) mulit-tentant Government Cloud and has received Provisional Authorizations (PA) from Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) at Impact Level 2 (IL2) and Impact

Level 4 (IL4), which is based on DISA's Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide (SRG v1.2) for both SaaS and PaaS. All cloud services are accessed via a VA hosted Trusted Internet Connection (TIC). All products include embedded collaboration, Premier Plus support, and an App Exchange for posting, buying, sharing, and selling relevant business applications. Any alternate product or technology must provide at least the same capabilities as the current commercially available version of the Salesforce product identified in the specified Area being addressed. VA does not seek to fragment capabilities in an identified Area. For each technology area identified, VA desires identification of enterprise proven alternate products that have been demonstrated to operate at a similar level of size, scope, security, and complexity. VA also seeks information associated with acquisition and operation of that technology over a term of 2 years. Specifically, VA seeks to answer the following questions for each Area. Identify the alternate product/solution that will provide at least the same capabilities as the current Salesforce product. Assess the products compliance with section 508 of the Americans with Disabilities Act. If less than 100%, estimate date when product will be fully compliant. Briefly describe an implementation with similar size, scope, security, and complexity. What are the estimated costs to acquire the necessary licensure to implement and operate the product/solution for one year? What are the recurring annual costs necessary to operate the product/solution after full implementation? Describe the transition strategy, timeline, and associated costs to migrate from the current Salesforce implementation to the proposed solution. What are the end user impacts? Specifically, VA seeks to understand how implementation of the identified alternate product/solution will integrate into each area currently being operated. The description of this should be as specific as necessary because seamless integration and interoperability are critical. Area 1: Case Management Salesforce Lightning Service Cloud VA owns and operates over 1,600 Salesforce Lighting Service Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS) licenses. These licenses include Agent Console, Knowledge, and Computer Telephony Integration. Area 2: Analytics Salesforce Analytics Cloud - Wave Analytics Platform VA owns and operates over 15,000 Salesforce Analytics Cloud - Wave Analytics Platform SaaS licenses. Area 3: Stakeholder Engagement Salesforce Customer Community VA owns and operates over 5,000 Salesforce Customer Community Plus and 200,000 Salesforce Customer Community SaaS licenses. Area 4: Platform as a Service (PaaS) Salesforce Force.com VA owns and operates over 15,720 Salesforce Force.com PaaS licenses including Apex, SOQL, and declarative development tools. Area 5: Video Integration Salesforce SOS Video-to-Video Integration for Salesforce VA owns and operates over 110 client licenses for Salesforce SOS. Complete the following table for each alternative product: Identify Area being addressed by this product/solution Name of product/solution  Is product/solution 100% compliant with Section 508  When will product/solution be 100% 508 compliant  Variances in capabilities from existing Salesforce product identified  Are all users of the product/solution on the same software version? Type of licensing (user, etc)  Identify implementations of similar size, scope and complexity.  Cost to implement the product/solution (i.e. how much will it cost VA to acquire the hardware, acquire the software, and implement the solution so that it can operate as a replacement for the Salesforce product in this Area?)  Number of licenses required  Recurring operational costs (software only) (i.e. What is the annual cost to maintain the software licenses so that VA can take advantage of the latest commercially available release of the product?)  Cost to add one additional user (software only) (i.e. When VA needs to expand usage, what are the estimated costs to add one additional user to the solution either in terms of additional license costs or additional usage costs?)  Recurring cloud-based operational costs (if proposed for Cloud) (i.e. What are the recurring annual costs to operate this solution based on the number of users as extrapolated from the existing Salesforce license ownership numbers provided?)  Transitional Costs to convert from current Salesforce implementation (i.e. what are the one-time costs, exclusive of implementation costs previously identified, that will be incurred to convert from the current Salesforce implementation to the product/solution being proposed?)  Identify and describe Transitional impacts (Retraining, security certifications, etc)  Time required to transition  Other costs (i.e. what other costs do you foresee that may be incurred if VA elects to change from the existing Salesforce product to the product/solution being proposed?)  Identify implementation impacts  Identify operational impacts  Identify end-user operational impacts  Is the product/solution compliant with HSPD-12 and NIST for Multifactor Authentication. Is the product/solution compatible with Smartcard Login? As of August 1, 2017 VA owns and maintains licenses for the following products from Salesforce. VA holds subscription licenses for these products because VA acquires Software Assurance for all these licenses, through September 26, 2017. License Product Family Qty Salesforce Lightning Service Cloud 1,697 Salesforce Analytics Cloud - Wave Analytics Platform 15,153 Salesforce Customer Community Plus 5,000 Salesforce Customer Community 200,000 Salesforce Force.com 15,720 Salesforce SOS 101