NNG15SD22B-123.doc

Blackberry Secure Collaboration Suite Licenses Control Number: TAC-18-51709 Blackberry Secure Collaboration Suite Licenses Control Number: TAC-18-51709

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: 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 Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for Blackberry (formerly known as GOOD) Secure Collaboration Suite licenses and software premium support.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The VA, Office of Information and Technology (OIT), Service Delivery and Engineering (SDE) is currently operating 40,000 GOOD Secure Collaboration Suite licenses for usage on mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) used for secure e-mail, calendar, and contacts in a variety of areas, including medical care, benefits, administrative, etc. VA OIT SDE has a requirement to transition 40,000 current licenses from the current GOOD Secure Collaboration Suite licenses to the Blackberry Secure Collaboration Suite licenses and software premium support as GOOD was acquired by Blackberry and is now marketed as one product. This effort includes an optional task to add and renew up to 20,000 new Blackberry Collaboration Suite licenses. These licenses include Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions comprised of an e-mail tool, messaging tool, and content tool for smartphones and tablets that provides Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 protection for data at rest and in motion. The Contractor shall provide Blackberry Secure Collaboration Suite licenses with S/MIME and Premium support. The Blackberry Secure Collaboration Suite licenses must be compatible with Microsoft Exchange 2010, 2013 and VA Office 365. The software premium support will consist of 24/7 live phone and e-mail support, 24/7 Blackberry knowledge base access, automatic software upgrade notification, eight designated customer contacts for direct support requests, priority queuing of calls and e-mails, proactive queuing of calls and e-mails, proactive 24/7 server monitoring, software patches, updates, early access to Blackberry software releases, and all server licenses and support. The period of performance for this action includes a 12-month base period with one 12-month option period. The period of performance for the optional task licenses is from date of exercise through the end of the period of performance in which they are exercised within. Optional tasks can be exercised anytime during the base period and/or Option Period 1.

4. Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting an exception to fair opportunity is Section 41 U.S.C. 4106(c)(2) as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (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 Above: Based on market research, as described in section 8 of this justification, it was determined that limited competition is viable among resellers. Only Blackberry Secure Collaboration Suite software licenses and software premium support can meet all the Government’s requirements. This action will transition the licenses and support for the 40,000 existing GOOD Secure Collaboration Suite licenses into Blackberry Secure Collaboration Suite licenses which SDE is currently using within the Blackberry (formerly GOOD) infrastructure which is a group of Blackberry email servers that serve as proxies between the VA exchange servers and the VA Government Furnished Equipment mobile devices which consist of Blackberry Mobile Control servers for managing accounts, Blackberry Messaging Servers for mail flow to exchange, and Structured Query Language databases supporting both types of servers for storing information. SDE is currently using the licenses within the existing framework of Blackberry Mobile Control Servers in two data centers and 18 various Blackberry Messaging Servers. The only software that runs on VA’s Blackberry servers is Blackberry software. Blackberry is the only e-mail solution that is interoperable and compatible with existing VA Blackberry Mobile Control Servers and Blackberry Messaging Servers. The existing Blackberry infrastructure is based on a proprietary code that only communicates with other Blackberry brand products. If another brand name software was used, it would not be able to function within the existing infrastructure and would not communicate with the current servers. To replace the servers, it would take 6-12 months and replacing the servers and existing hardware would result in extensive duplicate costs that would not be recovered through competition. In addition, Blackberry is the only source capable of providing the required software premium support due to the source code for the software patches, updates, and releases being proprietary. Access by a software servicing organization to Blackberry source code is necessary to issue updates and ensure any services conducted on the Blackberry software are properly configured, and only resellers of this software have such access. Changing to a different e-mail solution would not meet VA’s needs and it would require the addition of new infrastructure, including standing up new servers and providing significant training to administrators on how to use the new infrastructure. Those administrators would also be required to maintain the current Blackberry infrastructure while simultaneously increasing end user support for a different e-mail solution. In addition, no other brand infrastructure other than Blackberry’s is currently engineered/tested/installed/deployed throughout VA and currently functional with the existing e-mail infrastructure due to the way that the VA exchange system is built. Any other brand infrastructure would require a complete overhaul of the VA’s exchange infrastructure, including exchange and gateway servers and would require systems be rebuilt and replaced to create a working system. Based on the above, it has been determined that no other brand of software licenses and premium support can meet the Government’s requirements.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in section 8 of this justification. Although the Government is limiting competition as a result of specifying a brand name, there are multiple authorized resellers of the brand name software and premium support on the NASA SEWP V GWAC. Any proposals that are received shall be evaluated. Furthermore, in accordance with FAR 5.301 and 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), this action will be synopsized at award on the Federal Business Opportunities Page and the justification will be made publicly available as the estimated value is above the simplified acquisition threshold. The justification will be posted along with the solicitation in accordance with FAR 16.505(a)(4)(iii)(A)(2).

7. Actions to Increase Competition: In order to remove or overcome barriers to competition in future acquisitions for this requirement, the Government will continue to test other products and conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the market place that would enable future actions to be competed. VA is in the process of migrating from Exchange 2010 to Office 365 which is anticipated to be complete by summer of 2019. Once this migration is complete, additional products on the market will be compatible with VA’s exchange infrastructure allowing VA to consider alternate mobile device email products.

8. Market Research: Market research was conducted by the Government’s technical experts in June 2018 to ascertain the ability of any other source, besides Blackberry or a reseller, to provide the aforementioned licenses and software premium support. The research consisted of reviewing other software applications to include Airwatch Boxer and Microsoft Outlook. Neither of these client software products are interoperable or compatible with VA’s current Blackberry infrastructure and will not function inside that already existing infrastructure. In addition, as a result of the market research, the technical experts confirmed that as the source code required to issue the updates is proprietary, Blackberry is the only source capable of providing the required licenses and premium support for Blackberry software within the existing infrastructure. While other sources were found that have general capabilities to provide similar services, no other sources were found that could provide the aforementioned service without access to the proprietary Blackberry source code. No other source has the capability of developing and issuing patches, updates, or releases for Blackberry software necessary to support the existing Blackberry Servers within the Blackberry infrastructure.

Additional market research was conducted by the Contract Specialist in July 2018 by utilizing the Provider Look-up Tool on the NASA SEWP V GWAC website, which found a total of 80 resellers of Blackberry Limited brand name products and services, 14 of which are Vendor Information Pages verified Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business contract holders in Group B(2).

9. Other Facts: None.

10. Technical and Requirements Certification: I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance, which are included in this justification, are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Date:

IT Specialist

Signature:

11. Fair and Reasonable Cost Determination: I hereby determine that the anticipated price to the Government for this contract action will be fair and reasonable based on

Date: ______________________ Procuring Contracting Officer Signature: ______________________

12. Procuring Contracting Officer Certification: I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Procuring Contracting Officer Signature: ______________________

13. Legal Sufficiency Certification: I have reviewed this justification and find it adequate to support an exception to fair opportunity and deem it legally sufficient.

Legal Counsel

Signature: ______________________ Approval In my role as Advocate for Competition, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the acquisition of Blackberry Secure Collaboration Suite licenses and premium support, on an other than fair opportunity basis pursuant to the statutory authority cited in paragraph 4 above, subject to availability of funds, and provided that the property and services herein described have otherwise been authorized for acquisition.

Date: ___________________ Signature: _________________________

Advocate for Competition