Request for Information (RFI) for Data Lake solutions

Agency:	State Government of North Carolina
State:	North Carolina
Type of Government:	State & Local
NAICS Category:	518210 - Data Processing, Hosting, and Related Services 541511 - Custom Computer Programming Services 541512 - Computer Systems Design Services 541519 - Other Computer Related Services
Posted Date:	Apr 14, 2026
Due Date:	May 12, 2026
Solicitation No:	88-260027-JE
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Solicitation Number:	88-260027-JE
Project Title:	Request for Information (RFI) for Data Lake solutions
Description:	RFI for Data Lake solutions
Opening Date:	5/12/2026 2:00 PM
Posted Date:	4/15/2026
Status:	Open
Department:	CENTRAL PIEDMONT COMMUNITY COLLEGE


Solicitation Number * 88-260027-JE	Department CENTRAL PIEDMONT COMMUNITY COLLEGE	Status Reason Open
Opening Date 2026-05-12T14:00:00.0000000	Posted Date * 2026-04-14T17:57:15.0000000Z	Primary Commodity Code Software maintenance and support
Mandatory Conference/Site Visit — —	Special Instructions —	Solicitation Type * Select RFP IFB RFI
Owner Jennifer Ennis
Description RFI for Data Lake solutions
Description RFI for Data Lake solutions

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STATE OF NORTH CAROLINA

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION NO.88-260027-JE

Central Piedmont Community College Due Date: May 12, 2026 by 2pm

Refer ALL Inquiries to: Jennifer Ennis

E-Mail: Jennifer.ennis@cpcc.edu

Issue Date: April 14, 2026

Commodity: 811122 – Data Lake Platform – Software as

a Service

Using Agency Name: Central Piedmont Community

College

SUBMITTAL INSTRUCTIONS: Responses to this Request for Information (RFI) shall be submitted via the

electronic vendor portal (eVP) by the due date and time specified herein. Additional information can be found

at https://evp.nc.gov/.

NOTICE TO VENDOR

Request for Information (RFI) responses will be received electronically via the electronic Vendor Portal (eVP)

until May 12, 2026 by 2pm on the day of opening and then opened. Additional information can be found at the

eVP updates for Vendors link: https://eprocurement.nc.gov/news-events/evp-updates-vendors

EXECUTION

VENDOR NAME:

STREET ADDRESS:

CITY & STATE:

TYPE OR PRINT NAME & TITLE OF PERSON SIGNING:

AUTHORIZED SIGNATURE:

E-MAIL:

P.O. BOX:

ZIP:

TELEPHONE NUMBER: TOLL FREE TEL. NO:

FAX NUMBER:

DATE:

Rev 2017/02/27

1.0 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Central Piedmont Community College (Central Piedmont) is actively evolving its data and analytics

capabilities to better support institutional reporting, operational decision making, advanced analytics, and

future data driven initiatives. As part of this evolution, Central Piedmont is seeking to better understand

available Data Lake platforms, architectures, and capabilities that can operate effectively within a hybrid

environment, integrate with existing enterprise systems, and align with established governance, security,

and operational standards.

This Request for Information (RFI) is intended to collect information and recommendations regarding:

modern Data Lake solutions that can support the College’s current and future data, analytics, and

integration needs. Including but not limited to:

• Architecture and platform capabilities, particularly in hybrid and cloud based environments.

• Data ingestion, integration, and management approaches for diverse data sources.

• Governance, security, and compliance features suitable for enterprise and public sector

environments.

• Operational considerations, including monitoring, support, and long term sustainability.

• Scalability, performance, and cost management characteristics.

• Vendor experience and roadmap relevant to organizations of similar size and complexity.

Central Piedmont requests detailed point-by-point responses showing how your firm would address the

items in Section four (4) of this RFI:

2.0 RFI PROCEDURES

2.1. SCHEDULE

Respondents will have four (4) weeks to prepare their submissions to this RFI. Responses must be

received by the date, time, and location specified on the cover sheet of this RFI.

There is no guarantee that all RFI submissions will be invited to present. If selected, respondents will

be notified of the specific date and time approximately two weeks in advance of their presentation date.

Intended Schedule of Events

All times listed are EST.

April 14, 2026

April 24, 2026 by 2pm

April 29, 2026

May 12, 2026, by 2pm

RFI issued

Written questions due from vendors

Response to Written Questions (via

Electronic Vendor Portal (eVP)

Submission of Request for Information

responses due

2.2 RFI RELATED QUESTIONS/CLARIFICATIONS

Any questions regarding this RFI should be emailed on or before April 24, 2026 at 2:00 pm EST to the

attention of: jennifer.ennis@cpcc.edu. All questions must be submitted in writing. Please enter

“Questions RFI 88-260027-JE” as the subject for the email. An addendum containing any general

clarification questions and their answers will be issued as an addendum to this RFI within the electronic

vendor portal (eVP).

Rev 2017/02/27

Vendors responding to the RFI shall designate a single contact within that company for receipt of all

subsequent information regarding this RFI.

3.0 RFI RESPONSE

Central Piedmont recognizes that considerable effort will be required in preparing a response to this

RFI. However, please note this is a request for information only, and not a request for services.

The Vendor shall bear all costs for preparing this RFI. Responses for this RFI will be used to:

• Understand current market capabilities and architectural approaches for enterprise Data Lake

solutions.

• Assess how different solutions align with Central Piedmont’s technical, governance, and

operational context.

• Identify strengths, limitations, assumptions, and tradeoffs associated with various approaches.

• Inform future planning, architecture decisions, and potential procurement activities.

3.1 CONTENT AND FORMAT

Central Piedmont expects concise, detailed, point-by-point responses to each of the RFI response

items identified in Section 4.0 of this RFI. Central Piedmont is not interested in brochures or

“boilerplate” responses. Instead, responses should clearly define how the vendor’s proposed

solution(s) would meet Central Piedmont’s environment, operating model, and governance

approach. Any issues or exceptions to Central Piedmont’s deﬁned environment, operating model, and

governance should also be identified and explained.

Where appropriate, the response should also include annotated network drawings showing where

each of the pieces of equipment in the proposed solution would be located and how those devices

would be interconnected.

The response should define all services that would be required by the proposed solution. The

response should also include:

• The vendor’s understanding of the project and services by addressing Central Piedmont

Community College’s environment, operating model, and governance approach;

• An estimated total cost of ownership for the solution including continued compliance with

emerging industry standards.

3.2 MULTIPLE RESPONSES

Multiple responses can be provided from a single vendor provided that each response is

comprehensive, addresses all Central Piedmont’s deﬁned environment, operating model, and

governance, and is truly unique. Please clearly mark responses as “Response #1, Response #2,

etc.

4.0 REQUESTED INFORMATION FROM VENDORS

Central Piedmont Community College is interested in hearing from qualified vendors to describe their

solutions clearly and concisely, focusing on how their offerings would fit within Central Piedmont’s

environment, rather than providing generic marketing material.

Rev 2017/02/27

Responses should be tailored to Central Piedmont’s defined environment, operating model, and

governance approach as described in this RFI.

Central Piedmont Community College currently operates within the following:

• Hybrid environment with on-prem systems and Azure workloads, governed via a centralized

Azure Landing Zone architecture.

• A hybrid (hub and spoke) Data & Analytics operating model, with centralized governance and

distributed analytics capabilities.

• Multiple data domains (administrative, academic, operational, security, etc.) with varying

sensitivity and compliance needs.

• Strategic goals: analytics, reporting, self-service BI, advanced analytics/AI, and long-term data

retention.

Assumptions and Clarifications

• Central Piedmont operates within a hybrid environment leveraging Azure Landing Zones;

vendors should assume alignment to standard Azure governance practices

• The College uses a centralized governance model with distributed analytics capabilities across

business units

• Institutional data is classified and governed based on sensitivity, and solutions should support

classification-driven controls

• Data governance roles (e.g., Data Owners, Data Stewards, Data Custodians) are expected to

participate in approval, certification, and oversight processes

• Responses should assume integration with existing enterprise identity, security monitoring, and

data platforms

• Where specific details are not provided, vendors should state assumptions made in their

response

Respondents are invited to provide information on the following subjects:

4.1 ARCHITECTURE & PLATFORM CAPABILITIES

a. Describe your reference architecture for a Data Lake in a hybrid Azure environment. How does

it integrate with existing Azure Landing Zones?

b. How does your solution support separation of environments (dev/test/prod) and multi-

subscription or multi-account models?

c. What storage formats are supported (e.g., open formats vs. proprietary)? How is schema

evolution handled?

d. How does the platform support structured, semi structured, and unstructured data at scale?

e. Can the solution evolve from a traditional data lake into a lakehouse or analytics optimized

architecture over time?

f. Describe your implementation methodology for enterprise data platforms, including discovery,

design, build, test, and transition phases.

4.2 DATA INGESTION & INTEGRATION

a. What ingestion methods are supported (batch, streaming, CDC, API based)?

b. How does the solution integrate with on-premises systems and legacy platforms?

c. Describe how data validation, error handling, and retries are managed during ingestion.

d. Can ingestion pipelines be reused and templatized across domains?

e. How does the solution align with standardized integration and SOP practices already in place?

f. Describe how the platform supports data classification and sensitivity tagging. Include how

classification labels can be applied, inherited, or enforced and how they influence access

control, masking, or other protection mechanisms.

Rev 2017/02/27

g. Describe how the platform supports an enterprise data catalog and a data glossary. Include

capabilities for maintaining standardized definitions, enabling dataset discovery, identifying

trusted or certified datasets, and associating business metadata with technical metadata.

h. Describe how the platform validates data during ingestion and transformation processes.

Include capabilities for schema validation, required field enforcement, format validation, and

detection of incomplete or inconsistent records. Describe how validation failures are handled,

logged, and notified to administrators or data stewards.

4.3 GOVERNANCE, SECURITY & COMPLIANCE

a. How does the platform enforce data governance (metadata, lineage, classification)?

b. Describe role-based access control and integration with enterprise identity providers.

c. How is data encryption handled at rest and in transit?

d. How does the solution support policy driven controls aligned with Azure Policy and centralized

governance models?

e. What compliance frameworks or benchmarks does the platform support (without requiring

customization)?

f. Describe how the platform supports ongoing data quality improvement and governance. Include

capabilities for defining quality rules, monitoring quality metrics, providing stewardship visibility

into data quality issues, and managing remediation workflows when quality thresholds are not

met.

g. Describe how the platform supports governance and transparency for advanced analytics and

AI use cases. Include capabilities for dataset traceability, model governance, explainability, and

controls that help ensure sensitive or restricted data is used appropriately in analytical or AI-

driven workloads.

h. Describe how the platform supports institutional data governance roles, including Data Owners,

Data Stewards, and Data Custodians. Include capabilities that allow owners/stewards to review,

approve, certify, or restrict datasets and how stewardship accountability is maintained across

data domains.

i. Describe how the platform supports compliance with regulatory and legal obligations relevant to

higher education. Include capabilities that support data protection, audit reporting, retention

management, and evidence generation for regulatory reviews

4.4 DATA MANAGEMENT & LIFECYCLE

a. How is data lifecycle management handled (hot/warm/cold/archive tiers)?

b. Can retention policies vary by data domain or classification?

c. How does the platform support data quality rules and profiling?

d. Describe mechanisms for data versioning and historical snapshots.

4.5 ANALYTICS, BI & ADVANCED USE CASES

a. How does the solution integrate with BI and analytics tools (self-service and enterprise)?

b. What support exists for advanced analytics, ML, or AI workloads using lake data?

c. Can different personas (analysts, data scientists, business users) safely access the same data?

d. How does the solution prevent “data duplication” across analytics use cases?

4.6 OPERATIONS, MONITORING & SUPPORT

a. How is monitoring and alerting handled across ingestion, storage, and access?

b. What operational metrics are exposed to administrators?

c. Describe backup, recovery, and disaster resilience options.

d. What is the vendor’s support model, escalation path, and SLAs?

e. Describe how the platform supports monitoring and detection of suspicious or unauthorized data

access. Include capabilities for audit logging, anomaly detection, integration with security

monitoring platforms (e.g., SIEM), and alerting mechanisms for potential data misuse or

exfiltration.

Rev 2017/02/27

This page summarizes the opportunity, including an overview and a preview of the attached documents.

* Disclaimer: This website provides information about bids, requests for proposals (RFPs), or requests for qualifications (RFQs) for convenience only and does not serve as an official public notice. Individuals who wish to respond to or inquire about bids, RFPs, or RFQs should contact the relevant government department directly.

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Request for Information (RFI) for Data Lake solutions

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