MCNC announced that it is leading a Request for Proposals (RFP) process on behalf of three additional state/regional research and education networks for identifying appropriate vendor(s) whom can provide carrier-class operational management tools and services.

The four participants who co-developed this RFP include: BCNET, MCNC, OneNet, and WiscNet.

The participating organizations are looking for vendor(s) who provide carrier-class operational management tools service offerings and will be willing to work closely with each participating organization to develop and expand operational management tools technology and capabilities beyond that of a standard vendor-customer relationship.

Solutions must include or be capable of integrating with operational management tools that provide capabilities in the following functional areas: configuration management; discovery and automation; active and passive monitoring; event management; custom workflow; performance management; inventory and asset control; incident, problem, request and change management; API integration; custom reporting and metrics; and support, training and other professional services, respectively.

Proposals will be accepted in electronic format only, and should be submitted to MCNC Chief Financial Officer Patricia Moody at pmoody@mcnc.org. Vendors assume all risk of email delivery. The firm deadline for submission is April 16, 2012, at 5 p.m. EDT. Late proposals will not be accepted or reviewed.

All inquiries and questions related to this RFP must be directed in writing to the Operational Management Tools Review Committee at rfp-omt@mcnc.org. All questions must be asked by 5 p.m. EDT on March 28. All questions will be considered public, and answers will be posted online at http://www.mcnc.org/omt/rfp/questions.html . Questions asked after the aforementioned deadline will not be answered. Information about the project including registration for the RFP is available online at http://www.mcnc.org/omt/rfp/ .

"Operational management tools are critical to the operations of each of the participating organizations," said Carla Hunt, manager of MCNC's Knowledge and Information Systems. "The participating organizations developed this proposal together in order to aggregate demand and to learn from one another. As a result, we believe we have a stronger request for proposals."

MCNC reserves the right to modify any information presented in this RFP as information becomes available.