NNG15SD25B-069.pdf

Control Number TAC-19-54220 Computer Associates Technologies Software Maintenance and Support Services

JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics Technology Acquisition Center 1701 Directors Blvd, Ste. 600 Austin, TX 78744

2. Description of Action: This proposed action is for a firm-fixed-price delivery order to be issued. under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government Wide

· Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for Computer Associates (CA) Technologies software maintenance and support services.

3. Description of Supplies or Services: This proposed action supports the VA Office of Information and Technology (Ol&T), Service Delivery and Engineering, Infrastructure Operations (IO), by acquiring continued maintenance for the existing 643,482 CA perpetual software licenses currently fielded. The licenses

. monitor the performance of the VA systems and software; as well as provide automation and configuration discovery functions. The software maintenance will consist of software upgrades and updates to include major releases, point releases, service and security releases of applicable software on a quarterly basis, and/or within 48 hours in cases in which a high-risk vulnerability fix becomes available. The software maintenance is necessary for VA, Ol&T, Service Delivery and Engineering, 10 to be able to operate successfully. The maintenance is required to ensure the software remains operational. The period of performance is April 1, 2019 - March 31, 2020 with one 12-month option period. No software will be renewed or procured under this proposed action. The total estimated price of the proposed action is including option.

4. Statutory Authority: Pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 16.505(a)(4), the following brand name requirement is being justified and approved as an exception to fair opportunity under the statutory authority of Section 41 U.S.C.

4106(c)(2) as implemented by FAR Subpart 16.505(b)(2)(i)(B), entitled "Only one awardee is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services ordered are unique or highly specialized".

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited: Based on market research, as described in section 8 of this document it was determined that limited competition is viable among authorized SEWP resellers for the CA software maintenance and support as described in section 3 of this justification. The

Software Maintenance and Support Services current 10 infrastruc�ure is based only on existing CA software, protocols, and programs. Only CA or an authorized reseller can provide the required software maintenance and support,. because of the propriety source code required to develop and implement software updates and upgrades. No other source is capable of providing the required software maintenance that meets VA's unique functional requirements. Without access to this code, maintenance and support services provided on the software would not be properly configured and render the software inoperable. Additionally, a new software product, rather than renewing maintenance of existing licenses, would not be compatible with the existing infrastructure. VA requires software to be interoperable and compatible with the existing infrastructure protocols and functionality for continued operational availability. Use of any other brand name software would not communicate with the existing infrastructure due to the proprietary data constraints. 10 requires all the software to integrate into a seamless interface.

Other commercial off-the-shelf software products are not designed to integrate into a seamless interface with CA software. In addition, there would be extensive duplicated cost required to develop integration across multiple vendor tools. If

. the CA software licenses were abandoned in favor of a different product, 10 would need to purchase new software licenses and create a new infrastructure to support the new software. Replacing this infrastructure would result in duplicated costs of over $100 miliion that would not be recovered through competition. This estimate is based on the expert experience in the cost of similar software, knowledge of what 10 has currently invested in the existing licenses, and the expert opinion on the estimated labor required to migrate a different solution and create a new infrastructure. The harm to-the VA if 10 does

· not receive CA software maintenance would cause a loss of the vast majority of application and infrastructure monitoring capabilities. This would result in no visipility into system or application problems and require much more manual intervention to troubleshoot and diagnose system and application problems as' they occur. The loss would lead to a substantial disruption of 10 current levels of service, adversely affecting the customer and veterans 10 serve. In conclusion, the brand name CA mainframe software maintenance· is the only software maintenance that meets the Government's requirements.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in section 8 of this justification. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government's requirements. However, the undersigned VA technical representative determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers. In accordance with FAR 16.505(a)(4)(iii)(A)(1), this justification will be provided with the solicitation to all appropriate NASA SEWP V GWAC holders. Furthermore, in accordance with FAR 5.301, 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), and 16.505(a)(4)(iii), the award notice for this action will be synopsized on the Federal Business Opportunities website and this justification will be made publicly available within 14 days of ?Ward.

Software Maintenance and Support Servi.ces

7. Actions to Increase Competition: The Government will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the marketplace that would enable future actions to be fully competed.

8. Market Research: VA technical experts conducted market research from January through December 2018, by reviewing similar software products and services to ascertain if these items could meet VA's requirements. The Government's technical experts conducted web-based research on websites and reviewed similar products and maintenance support services in the mainframe and monitoring area available from Dell and International Business Machine�·(IBM). As a result of the market research, the technical experts confirmed that the other companies' software products will not support VA's existing infrastructure protocols, interoperability, and compatibility requirements.

In addition, none of tnese companies have access to CA's proprietary source code required to maintain IO's existing infrastructure. CA or an authorized reseller is the only source capable of providing the required maintenance. Based on the above, only CA mainframe software maintenance meets all the Government's requirements.

The Contract Specialist (CS) conducted market research in January 2019 by using the NASA SEWP V GWAC market research tool to determine what vendors are capable of meeting the requirement. Based on this market research, the CS fou_nd multiple service-disabled Veteran-owned small businesses capable of meeting the full requirement.

9. Other Facts: N/A

Page 4 of6