Office of the Chief Information Officer

United States Department of Agriculture

Web Portal

An image of an artistic abstract of a blue water funnel. Text reads: NITC provides a full service Web Portal solution for integrated web appliactions and content

Service Description

NITC provides an enterprise-class portal solution for web application hosting that allows aggregation of applications and content for delivery as a single, role-based application.

What is Included

  • Midrange Platform  as a Service (PaaS) virtual server
  • WebSphere™ Portal Server software licensing and maintenance
  • Key NITC Technical Services to install, patch, and upgrade software components

How We Charge

Hosting charges are based on actual number of virtual servers and resources utilized.

Price drivers:

  • Number of Web Portal servers required
  • Additional virtual server resources required (CPU, Memory, Storage)
  • Optional Fault Tolerance requirements
  • Optional Disaster Recovery requirements
  • Optional Professional Services

Service Level Metrics

Measure Service Level Targets 
System Monitoring 24 x 7
Incident Response 24 x 7
System Availability 99.9% or more
excluding planned downtime*

* - NITC reserves the option to schedule routine infrastructure maintenance activities on Sundays between 1800 to 2400 hours Central Time.

NOTE: NITC utilizes the USDA Universal Telecommunication Network (UTN) for Wide Area Network services. The UTN is contractually guaranteed to be 99.9% available but has historically delivered over 99.99% availability.

Cost Saving Tips

  • Engage NITC early in the scoping phase of a new project to identify all business and technical requirements
  • Forecast response time and load expectations
  • Utilize other OCIO service offerings to minimize application integration efforts and reduce costs through economies of scale

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