NNG15SD29B-001.pdf

Control Number TAC-18-49710

JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Acquisition Operations Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, New Jersey 07724

2. Description of Action: The 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 the activation of Salesforce Shield modules to the existing Salesforce licenses with associated software maintenance and support and the purchase of a Full Sandbox.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA Office of Information Technology (Ol&T) Enterprise Program Management Office has a requirement to encrypt and/or provide other security features on a license by license basis on and in Salesforce-based modules currently in use across the VA enterprise. VA already has 51,370 Salesforce licenses or individuals to access and use the VA's Salesforce Application Suite. The existing Salesforce modules include Service Cloud Licenses Unlimited Edition; Customer Community Licenses; Customer Community Plus Licenses;

Customer Community Plus; Force.com UE; Force.com Admin; and Wave Platform.

Salesforce is a multi-tenant architecture Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) with software delivered via the internet through a subscription service delivery model, commonly referred to as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). VA delivers business functionality through a number of configured modules to key stakeholders including Ol&T, MyVA, Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and National Cemeteries Administration (NGA) using declarative and Apex coding using Salesforce's Force.com PaaS and a number of Salesforce Saas products including Service Cloud Salesforce's Service Cloud Communities and Wave.

VA's Salesforce Application Suite is built on Salesforce's proprietary metadata platform that is configurable through both declarative and Apex coding leveraging Application Programing Interfaces to interact with legacy on premise and cloud based systems in a secure FedRAMP environment accessible only through a VA certified trusted internet connection. Salesforce utilizes a multi-tenant architecture with a metadata platform. It delivers three software upgrades a year, keeps all Federal customers on the same release, enables automatic upgrades of all VA applications (no additional cost or coding), provides a closed social network and Tier 2 and 3 helpdesk support, and supports a partner network of thousands of Independent Software Vendors via the Salesforce AppExchange software.

Salesforce was acquired in 2017 to meet the needs of VA Office of Information Security (OIS) to provide details of VA's security controls in order to be granted an Authority to Operate (ATO). In doing so Salesforce received two ATOs, one for