AFXC QUESTIONNAIRE
 

 

  

                                                       

Business Case Questions for Industry Adopters of SBC Products

The military is conducting a market survey and analysis of adapters of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) server-based computing (SBC) products as alternatives to traditional PC client computing platforms.  This survey considers thin clients, blade-based PCs, virtual desktops from servers, application streaming, OS streaming, and other forms of diskless computing within the scope of server-based computing.  This survey will be utilized to assess the benefits of these products against several factors including user experience, remote manageability, total cost of ownership, maintenance, information system security services, and applications.  We request your assistance in this activity. 

This is a Request for Information (RFI) only. It is not a request for proposals and does not commit the Government to issue a solicitation, make an award, or pay any costs associated with responding to this announcement. All submitted information shall remain with the Government and will not be returned.  

Responder Name:                                    

Responder Title:                                     
Responder Phone:                                  
Responder Email:                                      
Responder Organization Name:                 
Responder Organization Address:           

 

Have you implemented SBC within your organization?

Did you conduct a business case analysis or TCO analysis as basis for decision to implement SBC?

  

What SBC products are in use at your organization (please be specific by vendor)?

 

Is your utilization of SBC based on the use of a single application or is it utilized for multiple applications throughout the organization?

 

What type of application(s) is running in a SBC environment?

 

List the main drivers in your decision to implement SBC in the order of precedence. Better access to information, maintenance costs, security, manageability, IT modernization, etc.

  

How would you describe your IT environment before implementing SBC?
a.  PC environment: Outdated PCs, unmanaged PCs, managed PCs, non-standard PCs, standard PCs, etc.

b.  Network environment: LAN, WAN, ISP, etc.
c.  OS environment: Microsoft, UNIX, LINUX, etc.

Were the expected benefits realized?

 

Did you define specific use cases?

 

Did you define expectations before implementing SBC? 

 

Did you achieve your expectations?

  
 

Describe the risks you identified in implementing SBC? 

 

Describe your plan to mitigate those risks, and remaining risk factors.

 
 

Was your decision to move to SBC a business or IT decision?

Did you need to implement a client storage solution at the server-side to support your SBC solution?

If so what capacity per user?
 

Did you need to modify any business applications to make SBC work? What was the cost impact? 

 

What impact did SBC have on system capacity, specifically, bandwidth, computing resources, etc., as it was shifted to the server-side? 

 

Did you have to re-engineer your infrastructure and how significant was the change?

  
 

What capabilities for sustainability were implemented (e.g., loss of network) to support the SBC architecture?

  

What has been the impact on performance resulting from switching to SBC from decentralized PC based architectures? 

 
 

What has been the impact on the security of your systems?   

Did you implement a single sign-on with the SBC solution?   

 

Has your adoption of SBC improved operations with your customers? 

What kinds of business returns have been seen,( e.g. information availability improved sales by X or saved back office expense by Y)?

(First year includes implementation cost. Third year represents steady state costs )

 First Year Costs:
Third Year Costs:
 

Do you have and follow an IT modernization plan?

Can you cite benefits resulting from adoption of server based computing with respect to centralization of information that is normally isolated on PCs?

  

Can you provide estimates of savings resulting from decreased system management/support costs?

 

(First year includes implementation cost. Third year represents steady state costs )

 First Year Costs:
Third Year Costs:
 

Can you provide information on total cost of ownership savings resulting from implementing IT architectures based on SBC technology?

(First year includes implementation cost. Third year represents steady state costs )

 First Year Costs:
Third Year Costs:
 

Were there applications (as high bandwidth consumptive applications) that were not usable in a SBC environment? Explain:
 
Finally, what have been the pros and cons of your SBC implementation (lessons learned)?

PROS

CONS

 

Please submit your response when it is completed by clicking on the submit button. All data from this survey will only be published in summary form, with no references made to the responder.