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The U.S. Department’s Office of Financial Operations (OFO) Office of Business Support Services (OBSS), is responsible for maintaining the core financial Education Central Automated Processing System (EDCAPS). EDCAPS consists of four major components: Contracts and Purchasing Support System (CPSS); Grants Management System (G5); Financial Management Systems Software (FMSS); Travel Management System (TMS). The production systems run in an IBM datacenter located in Boulder, CO, on 12 Dell x86 servers which utilize the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) operating system.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server is an easy-to-administer, simple-to-control operating system that can be deployed on physical systems. It orchestrates the hardware resources for all basic computing requirements and includes support for all major hardware platforms and thousands of commercial and custom applications. RHEL provides a supported, hardened, enterprise environment that delivers on more efficient operational costs, better reliability and availability, and better scalability.

The Department requires original software manufacturer provided Premium subscription support to provide:

•24x7 for severity 1 and 2 cases.

•Standard business hours coverage for severity 3 and 4 cases.

•Web and phone support channels.

•Unlimited support cases.

In addition, the Department needs the following add on: Smart Management. Smart Management will allow the Department to easily manage and update Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems with network and provisioning modules that work with Red Hat Satellite.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is a Linux operating system developed by Red Hat. As such only Red Hat can provide the support services mentioned above.