NNG15SD34B-108.pdf

Control Number: TAC-19-54987

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 the issuance of a firm-fixed price (FFP), delivery order under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for the procurement of two (2) fully-populated Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) Synergy frames, which consists of six (6) HPE SY660 compute modules per frame, with an optional task to procure up to six (6) additional fully-populated Synergy frames. This action includes associated hardware and software, maintenance, warranty, implementation and installation service.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The VA, Office of Electronic Health Record Modernization (OEHRM) has a requirement for fully-populated HPE Synergy frames. The Government requires these items to expand and strengthen the Veterans Health Information System Technology Architecture (VistA) eXtract of 130 VA medical centers (VAMCs) infrastructure at the Austin Information Technology Center (AITC) and provide the computing resources necessary to support the large scale and high performance required for the OEHRM data migration to the Cerner effort. Extraction of the data from all 130 VAMCs requires intensive computing power to drive the acquisition of data and insertion of that data into databases in preparation for delivery to Cerner’s HealtheIntent platform. These transformations require many central processing unit (CPU) cycles. These additional servers will ensure that there is plenty of raw CPU power to handle the current load as well as the increase in load as more data domains are added to these real-time data transfers. The primary servers are currently running Windows 2016 OS, and the new blades will also need to run Windows 2016 so that blade modules can be swapped and replaced with little down time. The risk of an in-place upgrade is high, so VA requires these compute modules and frames to mimic the current environment, in order to test ahead of the upgrade and reduce cutover downtime. If a problem occurs during the upgrade, the Veteran’s health data being extracted and migrated would be put at risk. To minimize this risk, this effort would create an environment to test the upgrades before deploying them in the production environment. In addition to the hardware and software, maintenance, warranty, implementation and installation services are required. The warranty support services include bug fixes, software updates, and 24 hours a day, 7 days a week phone and email support. The warranty support also provides unscheduled maintenance in break/fix situations. Delivery is required within 30 calendar days of award.

Installation and implementation shall be completed within 15 calendar days from manner because VA will lack the necessary compute power. Having hot swappable compute modules gives VA the ability to resolve hardware failures with little or no downtime. Only HP blades have the physical and electrical connections to plug in the HP chassis. Also, the monitoring software that is used to control all of the Blades Chassis (Frame) in the environment will not work with other manufacturers blades (computer modules). Without this additional equipment, VA will not have this capability. Furthermore, use of any other brand name servers would result in VA replacing the existing HP server environment, causing extensive delivery delays that would not be recovered through competition. Since a stable, running environment is required to support the timely migration of data from VA to Cerner for the OEHRM effort, this cost and delay is prohibitive. These estimates are based on similar previous efforts.

Finally, the aforementioned servers are proprietary HPE products; therefore, only HPE or its authorized resellers have the access to the proprietary data and source code necessary to provide warranty services for the hardware and software within the servers. The proprietary code is required to ensure the servers are properly operational and defects properly resolved. Access to HPE proprietary data and source code is required to provide the required warranty services on the servers and ensure all the services provided are properly configured. Failure to procure the brand name warranty services may prohibit VA’s ability to maintain the operational status of the servers thereby presenting an adverse risk to the Cerner data migration effort.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in Section 8 of this justification. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government’s requirements. However, the undersigned VA technical representative determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for brand name licenses, as well as software maintenance and support. In accordance with FAR 16.505(a)(4)(iii)(A)(1), this justification will be provided with the solicitation to all appropriate NASA SEWP V GWAC holders. 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 (FBO) and the justification will be made publicly available within 14 days of award.

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 conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the marketplace that would enable future actions to be competed.

8. Market Research: Market research was conducted in January and February 2019 by the Government’s technical experts, who researched internet sites and contacted vendors such as Dell, Acer, and IBM for information on server equipment. Vendors were provided with the precise data center specifics and were asked to identify servers to expand the existing VX130 environment. The results of the market research confirmed that only HPE, or an authorized reseller, has the capability of providing servers that are compatible with the existing infrastructure. Dell, IBM, and Acer were found to be incompatible with the existing infrastructure and have agreed with the Government’s assessment.

These products did not meet the requirement to integrate seamlessly with the current environment. This equipment is required to fit and have 100 percent compatibility in an already existing HPE environment. Furthermore, the market research results indicate that only HPE and resellers of HPE products can provide warranty on the HPE servers as no other manufacturer has the required access to HPE proprietary data and source code.

Additional market research was conducted by the Contract Specialist in March 2019 utilizing the Provider Lookup tool on the NASA SEWP V GWAC website which identified numerous resellers of the required HPE hardware and warranty including twenty-five prospective Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) GWAC holders. Therefore, limited competition is anticipated on NASA SEWP V among authorized resellers of the required brand name hardware and warranty.

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.