The Department of Labor extended the deadline to submit proposals for its software as a service cloud email platform solicitation to October 1, 2012.
The original deadline was this Friday, but has been extended due to a large number of questions received, according to the posting on FedBizOps.
The Department of Labor (DOL) Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) is pursuing the acquisition of e-mail, collaboration, office automation, eDiscovery, and records management services as Software as a Service (SaaS) from a commercial provider of Cloud Computing services.
The intent is to transform the current DOL legacy on-premise services into a primarily Cloud based SaaS services, with the requisite support contract that provides a highly innovative, secure, compliant, cost-effective, and evolving solution.
The ideal solution would be an integrated suite of tools and capabilities that allows the government to transform the way business is conducted today, while also having the ability to manage, and monitor service performance, quality, and delivery, through clearly defined roles and business rules, rather than physical control of assets and direct software licensing.
Recent trends show that traditional outsourcing and system integration models are insufficiently adaptive and costly; while cloud computing provides a more efficient utility based model for acquiring IT services, with the clear benefit of shifting the focus of IT budgeting from capital expense to operating expense.