Description:
OBJECTIVE: To investigate and propose an innovative and flexible approach that supports a broad range of capabilities that leverages and extends the state-of-the-art in service monitoring and control technologies, configurable and usable by soldiers, for remotely monitoring and controlling critical factors and parameters associated with a diverse suite of custom services and applications. DESCRIPTION: This topic is intended to incrementally advance the state-of-the art in service management with focus on remote monitoring and control capabilities suitable for a tactical environment constrained by limited bandwidth, restrictions imposed by Information Assurance policies, limited training, and evolving custom mission command applications and application architectures. The proposal will demonstrate improvements in acquiring and reporting applications"vital signs. Consideration and innovations to existing government and/or commercial open source capabilities are desirable. Innovations that augment or enhance existing protocols (i.e. SNMP, Netflow, etc.) are also of interest. Control innovations are sought to affect a reduction in application degradation, interruptions, failures and down-time that are common in the tactical environment. Innovations are needed in the area of algorithms and inputs that will enable intelligent controls such as custom application load balancing and re-configuration. The proposed solution must be configurable and customizable to accommodate the specific monitoring and control needs of a wide range of individual custom applications and architectures, with unique monitoring and control requirements. The proposal should also address mechanisms, automatic or manual, that will enable prioritized limiting of monitoring and control capabilities based on resource or mission constraints. PHASE I: Provide a conceptual model/architecture, components, component architectures, resource requirement estimates (HW, SW, Training, Bandwidth, etc), and concept of operations (CONOPS) for the proposed service management capabilities described above. Document proof-of-concept and feasibility analysis of key component technology innovations based on lab tests or simulations. Provide the high-level approach to development and commercialization of the proposed solution with key assumptions, risks, risk mitigation strategies, and timelines. Phase I Deliverables Conceptual models Proposed solution"s resource requirements in a tactical, operational environment List of innovations in service management components relative to the current state-of-the-art Component architectures CONOPs in tactical, operational environment Phase I Final Report PHASE II: The scope of this phase will be a final design and prototype of the Service Management capability proposed in Phase I using applications and components (HW & SW) mutually agreed to by the government and the proposer. The demonstration shall show that the proposed Service Management design can meet expected performance capabilities in conditions representative of Army tactical operations. An appropriate test case will be based on target tactical, distributed, hierarchical, network and service architectures that represent the issues of managing custom applications and the ability to customize, by application, the information retrieved, processed, and displayed. PHASE III: The end-state demonstrated product will have dual-use value in commercial and government applications. Potential commercial market applications for these innovations include Homeland Defense, first-responders, and local and Federal government organizations. In addition, documentation is required that describes the underlying methodologies, approaches, assumptions, capabilities and limitations. The vendor is responsible for marketing its demonstrated Service Management capability for further development and maturation for potential Post-Phase II transition and integration opportunities including actual military Programs Of Record (POR) and any dual-use applications to other government and industry business areas. REFERENCES: 1. Government open source monitoring information: http://www.forge.mil 2. Commercial open source information: http://www.itmanagement.com/features/10-open-source-network-tools-052407/ 3. Army Information Assurance information: https://ia.signal.army.mil/refLib.asp 4. Army Service and Network Operations Convergence: http://www.afcea-augusta.org/pdf/briefs/TCM%20GNE%20Mr%20Morrison.pdf 5. Tactical Network Overview: http://tactical-communicator.com/pdf/Commanders_Handbook_v1.6.pdf 6. Tactical application evolution design concepts a. REST: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-restful/ b. Service Bus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_service_bus c. SOAP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOAP
