************* RFI ADDENDA (JUST A COMMENT, REALLY) ***************

Recently, we've been getting a lot of great questions about our plans for the system, or technical constraints, and our ultimate acquisition strategy. The thing of it is, we really don't know any of this stuff. Oh, sure, our CTO knows what we currently own and has a good sense of our overall storage requirements now (and presumably) going into the immediate future. But we lack sufficient knowledge of the various hardware options out there to make even a blind sketch of a decision tree, let alone start chopping off stray limbs.

That's why we're doing an RFI. We're trying to gather information in order to begin to piece together our bid requirements and an appropriate budget.  We want to know what manufacturers have to offer and what it can do. Only you can help us do this.

Again, I wish to stress that this is an RFI, not an RFP. We're soliciting information about the product line you (and your competitors) carry, the various features, costs, and configurations.  We are precisely NOT dictating any particular ‘best fit' approach so we can better understand what the industry presently offers and where it seems to be going. This will help our CTO budget out our ultimate acquisition as well as figure out the initial strategy that seems best for our immediate plans. We are researching now, not shopping.

So we welcome questions, but have little idea how to address those which seem to require us to make a decision about a specific set of solutions or configurations, simply because we feel we lack sufficient familiarity with the present state of the art to make an informed decision.

These questions are valuable. They should certainly be addressed. However, I humbly submit that you are in the best position to do so. Ask the questions, help us understand why the concerns they explore are important, and then tell us what you think the consequences are to us of answering them in different ways. Certainly we would wish to build a solicitation around clearly-defined constraints. Please help us understand, from your perspective, what these are and how the system(s) you have to offer are equipped to manage them.

We appreciate the level of engagement we have seen to date and are excited and hopeful that we will reap a good deal of quality information from the RFI process. We welcome your ideas and expertise and look forward to considering the fruits of your responses.  Please be reassured that so long as you e-mail your response to me in the format requested by the RFI attachment (see p. 2, "Response and Compliance Matrix," a format which is not all that restrictive and even includes a catch-all category in item #5), you can't get this wrong!