NNG15SD26B-150.pdf

Software Maintenance for Veritas Capacity Control Number: TAC-18-19672

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, New Jersey 07724

2. Description of Action: The proposed action is for a firm-fixed-price task order issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise Wide Procurement V (SEWP) Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC), for renewal of Veritas software with software maintenance, and technical support services.

3. Description of Supplies or Services: VA, Office of Information and Technology, Information Technology Operations & Services (ITOPS) has a requirement for renewal of 1201 NetBackup software licenses and 6000 Education Training Units with software maintenance and technical support services for the 1201 terabytes (TB) of Veritas NetBackup (NBU) Platform Base software currently in use at the VA, and technical support services. The Veritas Capacity software products currently employed within the existing Infrastructure Operations (10) storage infrastructure support data backup and recovery operations for all IO hosted systems, storage, and associated applications that are currently deployed. This effort is to renew annual software with software maintenance support for Veritas NetBackup Platform Base Complete Edition 7.7 (or most current version) software and software maintenance, and technical support services. The software maintenance shall consist of patches, bug fixes, new features, and new product releases. The technical support services shall include the review of VA NBU deployments to analyze current performance and trends; reporting problems or deficiencies found in the VA NBU deployments; perform optimizations for each deployment; a dedicated helpdesk support technician; a senior NBU technical support point of contact to provide ongoing expertise for VA's tactical and strategic NBU related initiatives; and training. The period of performance shall be 12 months from date of award with one 12-month option period. The total price of the proposed action, including the option period, is .

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: Based on market research, as described in section 8 of this justification, it was determined that limited competition is viable among authorized resellers for the required brand name Veritas software and associated software maintenance and technical support services. The current 10 storage infrastructure includes database structures, protocols, and software application programming interfaces only supported by existing Veritas Capacity software for which

VA requires renewal of its annual software license and associated maintenance, and technical support services to ensure continued operational availability. Only Veritas NetBackup software is interoperable with VA's 10 backup infrastructure. This backup infrastructure consists of a combination of hardware and software that is all Veritas brand name. Due to the Veritas proprietary coding of the Veritas products, no other brand name software can function and communicate with the existing 10 backup infrastructure. Use of any other brand name software will result in replacing the existing 10 backup infrastructure which would result in extensive delivery delays and duplicated costs of approximately $SOM that would not be recovered in a competition.

These estimates are based on previous efforts for similar items specifically approximately $40M-$60M in backup hardware replacement and $7M-$20M in software licenses. VA's backup data is currently stored within a Veritas proprietary file, known as a catalog, which can only be accessed by Veritas software due it is proprietary nature. No other software can access the Veritas catalog. Without the Veritas software, VA would no longer be able to access its data. The new software would not be compatible with the current application, thus the government would be forced to duplicate all existing hardware and software. This would require the government to maintain all licensing, software, and hardware for the existing environment in addition to incurring all new Licensing, Software, and Hardware cost for the new environment for a period of up to three years. Additional duplicated costs will be incurred by Networking and Compute divisions that will be forced to provide double communication ports to allow communication of both environments. The duplicated costs associated would require expenditures exceeding $1 00M. Also, if another brand name software was used the currently accessible backup data would risk transfer and compatibility issues with another software. Specifically, no other brand name software has the ability to read the encrypted coding of the existing software which stores this data. This would result in a loss of existing critical Veteran data. In addition, only Veritas or a reseller has access to the proprietary source code necessary to configure the required patches, bug fixes, new features, and new product releases. Access to the proprietary source code is necessary to provide the maintenance support and technical support services including deployment and implementation support. Failure to acquire the software maintenance and technical support services would cause system failures, putting the 1,201 TB of storage and associated data currently being backed up and restored, including internal VA sensitive information, at risk of security breach and compromise.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in section 8 of this. document. Although the Government is limiting competition as a result of specifying a brand name, there are multiple authorized resellers of the brand name software maintenance on the NASA SEWP V GWAC. The justification will be posted along with the solicitation in accordance with FAR 6.302-1(c). 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.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: The Government will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the market place that would enable future actions to be competed. Vendors present white papers and education on competing products throughout the year that are evaluated by the government's experts.

8. Market Research: The Government's technical experts conducted market research in February 2018. Market research was conducted by reviewing similar software and software maintenance to ascertain if these products could meet or be modified to meet VA's requirements. Specifically, the Government's technical experts conducted web-based research on vendor websites

. Although these vendors offer similar software products and services, only Veritas or an authorized reseller are capable of providing software and software maintenance that meets the Government's compatibility and interoperability requirements as described in section five of this justification.

Additional market research was conducted in July 2018, wherein the Government's technical experts utilized the NASA SEWP V GWAC Provider Lookup tool and identified_ several sources capable of meeting VA's needs. Specifically, 20 verified service disabled Veteran-owned small business resellers were identified as resellers of this product. Therefore, VA anticipates limited competition for this action.

9. Other Facts: NIA