NNG15SD31B-061.pdf

JUSTIFICATION

FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics

Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07724

2. Description of Action: This proposed action is for a firm-fixed priced 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 brand name Informatica Enterprise Data Management Production Software Licenses, production maintenance, training, service account management, and technical architecture support.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The Office of Information and Technology has a requirement to support the Financial Management Business Transformation (FMBT) effort to transform the VA legacy Financial Management System (FMS). FMBT is a strategic multi-year program which requires an integrated data management platform solution. The FMBT program office is charged with replacing the aging VA FMS and revising and re-integrating over 100 FMS legacy feeder systems with the selected commercially available off-the-shelf financial management system solution, CGI Federal, Inc.’s Momentum. VA requires software licenses to the Informatica brand name Enterprise Data Management (EDM) production suite of products in order to cleanse, transform and migrate the financial data currently residing in a variety of VA legacy systems to the Momentum system, as well as to Data Warehouse/Business Intelligence and data archiving environments.

VA is utilizing a credit approach to procure the licenses to the Informatica EDM production suite of software products. One credit is equivalent to a dollar value and each EDM software product may be licensed for a certain number of credits. This approach allows VA pricing discounts to purchase the software licenses in a phased method. Specifically, VA requires Informatica software in order to create a data management platform to meet VA needs. Credits are needed to acquire the necessary EDM software products which will be used throughout the FMBT lifecycle, as the integrated Financial and Acquisition Management System (iFAMS) rolls out. To establish the pre-production environment for the base platform, VA requires licenses to the core Informatica software modules, which include Powercenter, PowerExchange, Data Quality, Enterprise Information Catalog, and Master Data Management (MDM).

These core software modules will establish the initial baseline data management basic functionality to accomplish the Data Discovery, Data Profiling, and Data Cleansing & Preliminary Mapping of data across the enterprise. Licenses for these core software modules will equate to 45,000 credits. After the core software modules are licensed to be placed into production, VA will then be able to specify the specific software license requirements for the remaining phases. While some of the specifics may change in

Informatica Enterprise Data Management Production Software Licenses Control Number TAC-18-48508

Phases 2-5 based on the outcome of Phase 1, a total of 340,000 credits, including the option periods, is the total amount of credits VA will be allowed to procure licenses for the Enterprise Data Management Platform.

In addition to the software licenses to the EDM core modules, VA requires 24/7 Enterprise Production Mission Critical Maintenance support for help-desk based services for the Informatica product modules and functionalities. These services include Informatica product specialist assistance with implementation and product deployment, as well as expert consultation regarding specific product functionality utilization.

VA also requires Technical Architecture Manager (TAM) support in building, designing and implementing the Informatica Platform and ensuring FMBT architecture can adapt to meet future demand. The TAM shall serve as a dedicated resource and consistent engagement point for all aspects of the Informatica Platform.

VA also requires Service Account Manager (SAM) to oversee the technical delivery and support of Informatica implementations. The SAM shall be responsible for partnering with both the VA/FMBT program leaders and the TAM, to stay current on the features and benefits of Informatica’s products.

VA also requires training in a variety of training modalities (e.g. web based, self-paced, virtual and on-site instructor led classes) to train VA users on the Informatica products deployed.

The Period of Performance shall be 12 months with four 12-month option periods.

4. Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting an exception to fair opportunity is 41 U.S.C. 4106(c)(2) as implemented by Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 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 Above: Based on market research, as described in section eight of this document, it is determined that limited competition is viable among authorized resellers for the brand name Informatica EDM Production Software Licenses and services. Informatica EDM Production Software is the only data management suite of products that can meet all VA’s requirements. The FMBT business applications are extremely large and complex. The VA FMS systems house volumes of data and the variety of financial data spans over 30 years which requires an extremely robust software data management product suite/toolset with a flexible architecture as well as a concurrent MDM blending of information from multiple domains (source systems) and technical types into a single managed result. Based on research, the Informatica EDM Production Software is the only solution that can deliver the functionalities and capabilities identified. Specifically, Informatica software, through its MDM functionality, is the only software that possesses the capabilities necessary to integrate multiple technical disparate feeder systems, manage and maintain a vendor master database, as well as facilitate the ability to perform “write back” to synchronize source systems that maintain local copies of a vendor table. This is a critical VA functional requirement. Informatica software also provides the ability to perform both deterministic and probabilistic sets of match algorithms, to increase the level of accuracy and efficiency when matching entities. This is another critical VA functional requirement that only Informatica software can provide. Informatica software also provides the flexibility to permit VA to add new financial domains and provide access to key VA systems; and a solution that has the ability to mask from multiple different data sources. Additionally, Informatica software provides a configurable trust framework to determine a priority of data source for individual fields all combining into a golden record. This trust framework is flexible and changeable through user configuration as source system quality changes. This is yet another critical VA functional requirement that only Informatica software can provide.

The Informatica EDM suite of software products has the required capability to integrate multiple technical disparate feeder systems, manage and maintain a vendor master database, as well as facilitate the ability to perform “write back” to synchronize source systems that maintain local copies of a vendor table. Other vendors lack the capability to access the many different VA data types and do not possess the capability to mask data and dynamically adjust to user credentials in the many VA systems. As the VA requires data masking and security, only the Informatica EDM production software provides the functionality to mask from multiple different data sources, mask in flight and across the different platforms needed by the VA (on-premise, big data, and cloud apps like Concur and Salesforce). Finally, only Informatica, or authorized resellers, can provide the services including the SAM and TAM requirements described in section three of the justification due to the proprietary data required. Any source that provides services to the software needs to access the proprietary information regarding the product data to ensure all the services are properly configured. Also, proprietary material is required to conduct training that is only possessed by Informatica and authorized resellers.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in the market research section of this document. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government’s requirements. It was determined, however, that limited competition is viable among authorized resellers of the Informatica product brand name item. In accordance with FAR 5.301 and 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), the award notice for this action will be synopsized on the Federal Business Opportunities Page and this justification will be made publicly available within 14 calendar days of award.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: In order to remove or overcome barriers to competition in future acquisitions for this requirement, the agency will work with the program office to perform additional market research so that other solutions can be considered in the future.

8. Market Research: In January 2018 the Government’s technical experts conducted market research by reviewing similar products, such as International Business Machines (IBM) InfoSphere Information Server for Data Integration, IBM InfoSphere MDM, IBM InfoSphere Optim Archive , IBM InfoSphere Optim Test Data Management and Oracle’s Master Data Management Suite, Oracle Data Integration, Oracle Enterprise Data Quality,Oracle Enterprise Metadata Management, Oracle Masking & Sub Setting for Enterprise Manager and Oracle GoldenGate. Although Oracle and IBM offer similar products neither can meet all VA’s requirements. MDM is a key component for the VA. With MDM VA requires a solution that can merge the data and identify matches through both a probabilistic and deterministic set of match algorithms. Neither IBM nor Oracle offer algorithmic functionality and neither of these brands meet VA’s requirement for flexibility in order to permit VA to add new financial domains. Both brands require coding and software customization to adapt the MDM model to account for new domains, which fails to meet VA’s need for flexibility. Secondly, IBM and Oracle do not offer the ability to integrate multiple technical disparate feeder systems, manage and maintain a vendor master database, as well as facilitate the ability to perform “write back” to synchronize source systems that maintain local copies of a vendor table. In addition, IBM and Oracle do not offer the ability to provide a configurable trust framework to determine a priority of data source for individual fields all combining into a golden record. Furthermore, Oracle no longer even offers an MDM solution. Although IBM and Oracle products offer the ability to access multiple data sources neither product is able to access key VA systems. For example IBM does not publicly offer a data integration connector to Concur, which is a key system used with VA’s financial business. Oracle limits its capabilities to the Oracle stack of products and well used data sources.

VA requires a solution that has the ability to mask from multiple different data sources.

Oracle cannot mask other data sets outside of an Oracle product, thereby, not meeting the multi-source requirement of VA. IBM cannot mask in-flight, thus creating a need to stage data in a separate environment which requires more infrastructure, processing, and complexity. IBM’s product lacks the capability to directly mask data across the different platforms needed by the VA (on-premise, big data, & cloud apps like Concur and Salesforce). Informatica has the unique capability to access the VA’s disparate data sources, and mask data in both a persistent and dynamic approach across the VA enterprise systems. This review of products has resulted in a determination that only Informatica has a proven product that meets all VA’s requirements. Lastly, as stated above in section five, only Informatica, or an authorized reseller, can provide the services described in section three of this justification due to the proprietary data required. IBM and Oracle cannot provide services to the software needed to access the proprietary information regarding the product data to ensure all the services are properly configured. Also, proprietary material is required to conduct training that is only possessed by Informatica and authorized resellers. The Government’s technical experts have determined that only brand name Informatica Enterprise Data Management Production Software Licenses, production maintenance, training, service account management, and technical architecture support can meet all of VA’s needs.

Additional market research was conducted in January 2018 by utilizing the NASA SEWP Provider Lookup tool to determine whether the brand name Informatica products are available from NASA SEWP V GWAC holders. VA determined that there are several resellers of the brand name Informatica products that hold current GWACs such that limited competition is anticipated.

9. Other Facts: None.