7A20--Request for Information (RFI) - Industry Day

The Department of Veterans Affairs Request for Information Industry Day September 09, 2026 September 10, 2026 Introduction This Request for Information (RFI) is issued solely for market research and acquisition planning purposes in accordance with Revolutionary Federal Acquisition Regulation Overhaul (RFO) 8.4 and 10. This notice does not constitute a Request for Quote (RFQ), Request for Proposal (RFP), Invitation for Bid (IFB) or any commitment by the Government to issue a solicitation for or award a contract. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is conducting an Industry Day Event to assess the evolving observability marketplace. The VA operates at true enterprise scale with 550,000 end-user endpoints, 63,000+ monitored nodes, 853 unique services, and petabytes of data daily across hybrid cloud, on-premises, and multi-cloud environments. VA is seeking technical solutions that can combat significant platform challenges sustaining performance under ingestion and analytical workloads. VA is requesting interested vendors to respond to this RFI based on the details set forth below. Based on responses, VA will identify qualified vendors to participate for an in-person industry day in Austin, TX. Selection of qualified vendors for the purpose of this market research is at the Government s discretion. VA will assess solutions based on: How your product performs at true enterprise scale (ingestion, query performance, usability under load) Your Artificial Intelligence (AI) / agentic capabilities Your FedRAMP roadmap Your competitive positioning and market strategy VA are seeking vendors in the following categories: Network & Infrastructure Monitoring (NMS) platforms Application Performance Monitoring (APM) solutions AI Ops & Incident Management platforms Enterprise Observability platforms that span multiple domains Disclaimer This notice does not in itself represent the issuance of a formal request for proposal/quote and is not intended to be taken as such. This is a Request for Information (RFI) only and shall not be considered an Invitation for Bid, Request for Quotation, or a Request for Proposal. Do not submit a proposal or a quote. This market research is issued for information and planning purposes only and does not constitute a solicitation nor does it restrict the Government as to the ultimate acquisition approach. In accordance with FAR 15.201(e), responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. Additionally, there is no obligation on the part of the Government to acquire any products or services described in this RFI. You will not be entitled to payment for direct or indirect costs that you incur in responding to this RFI. Any contract that might be awarded based on information received or derived from this market research will be the outcome of a competitive process. Interested parties are responsible for adequately marking proprietary, restricted or competition sensitive information contained in their response. The Government does not intend to pay for the information submitted in response to this RFI. Step 1 RFI Submission Vendors shall respond by September 02, 2026, with their interest and literature to: Chantel.Bass@va.gov, Kodi.Kirchofner@va.gov Email Subject Line: Response to RFI Number 36C10B26Q0777 Literature & Technical Specifications Vendors shall submit technical specifications and supporting literature, not to exceed 30 pages that details: Architecture overview (collector/agent model, scalability approach) Performance benchmarks at scale (node count, event throughput, query latency) AI/agentic capabilities roadmap FedRAMP certification status and timeline Deployment/integration complexity Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) Connection to resellers including Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Business (SDVOSB) and Veteran Owned Small Business (VOSB) Existing Government procurement vehicles 3.2 Attendee Details Vendors shall provide an attendance list to include names, titles, and point of contact information. A maximum of five team members may attend, including at a minimum a Program/Project Manager (PM) and a Technical Subject Matter Expert (SME), remaining attendees are at the vendor s discretion. Identified Qualified Vendors After reviewing the provided details, the Government will invite qualified vendors to participate in the industry day. Vendor pre-loaded scenario, presentation, and technical specifications shall be submitted by September 07, 2026. Responses shall be submitted electronically to: Chantel.Bass@va.gov, Kodi.Kirchofner@va.gov Email Subject Line: Industry Day Briefing for RFI Number 36C10B26Q0777 Pre-Event Technical Briefing (Optional) Vendors may request a 30-minute call with VA Technical Team to align on demo objectives. Pre-events must be scheduled prior to the Industry Day Event. Event Details Date: September 9, 2026 September 10, 2026 Location: The Department of Veterans Affairs Austin Information Technology Center (AITC) 1615 Woodward Street, Austin, TX 78772 VA Attendees: VA Enterprise Command Center Director, Executive Leadership, CNS. Observability Manager, Technology Acquisition Center representation Format: Full vendor presentations + Q&A + interactive panels Property Instructions: The AITC building is a highly secure facility. Vendors are required to enter through the gated entrance, with parking in a visitor area. Only pre-authorized individuals from identified Vendors can access the building where they will undergo screening via metal detectors. Response Instructions Each vendor will be allotted a 55-minute session structured as follows: Opening (5 min): Your company/product positioning Live Demo of Pre-loaded Scenario (35 min): Walk through your scale demo, showcase performance, discuss architecture decisions AI/Agentic & Competitive Story (10 min): Where you're headed, FedRAMP strategy, unique value vs. competitors Q&A (10 min): Direct questions from VA decision makers Transition (5 min): Escort vendor participant out Pre-loaded Demon Scenario and Presentation Vendors shall load a realistic VA-scale environment into their product/solution. Minimum Requirements At least 10,000+ monitored nodes/devices/services (more if feasible) Multiple cloud environments represented (AWS, Azure, GCP if supported) Real-world data patterns and performance characteristics Pre-built dashboards showing service/application health If a full VA-scale pre-load is not feasible, provide a representative scenario demonstrating your platform's ability to: Ingest and process high-volume metric/event data without degradation Perform complex queries and anomaly detection without slowdown Support federated/distributed architecture if applicable Vendors are highly encouraged to come to the table with engaging demonstrations under realistic conditions over relying on slide deck presentations. Recommended Interested Sources: SolarWinds Dynatrace LogicMonitor PagerDuty Other NMS vendors (Cisco, Kentik, Arista, others) APM vendors (New Relic, Elastic APM, Datadog, others) AIOps/Incident Management platforms (Splunk/Moogsoft, Atlassian,Incident.io, others)