NNG15SD25B-061.pdf

FICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUN

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Procurement, Acquisition & Logistics 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 issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solution for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for the procurement of brand name Red Hat software licenses and maintenance in support of \/A's Financial Management Business Transformation (FMBT) Program.

3. Description of Supplies or Services: VA, Enterprise Program Management Office (EPMO) is seeking to acquire Red Hat software licenses in support of the FMBT Program. Red Hat licenses are serving as the base platform or engine upon which the FMBT applications reside and performs the underlying work for the applications.

The FMBT applications are tuned and configured to run on top of Red Hat. VA requires the following Red Hat software licenses, a quantity of 1 brand name Red Hat Openshift Container Platform with Application Services Portfolio Premium; 2 Each Ansible Towers; 6 Red Hat Learning Subscription Standard;12 Container Storage Add-On for Openshift Container Platform; 388 Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) Server and 1800 Hours of Openshift implementation services. The aforementioned items do not include hardware. The FMBT Program will provide a modern integrated financial management and acquisition solution with transformative business processes and capabilities that will enable VA to meet its goals and objectives, in compliance with financial management legislation and directives. The procurement of these software licenses shall include one year of maintenance for access to upgrades related to scan, analysis and reporting engines. The period of performance shall be 12 months from date of award with one 12-month option period and two optional tasks.

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 Above: Based on extensive market research as described in section 8 of this document, it was determined that limited

Hat

Additional research was conducted in November 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, 2·1 verified service disabled Veteran-owned small business resellers were identified as resellers of this product. Therefore, VA does anticipate limited competition for this action.

9. Other Facts: N/A