NNG15SD19B-172.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, 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) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC), for the renewal of brand name CommVault software maintenance support, and the procurement of additional brand name CommVault software licenses and maintenance support.

3. Description of Supplies or Services: VA Office of Information and Technology, IT Operations and Services has a requirement to renew over 7,000 terabytes (TB) of brand name Commvault data capacity software licenses and maintenance for data protection & backup in support of critical sites data and the National Tapeless Backup Encryption (TBE) project. CommVault is installed and operating VA wide in all respective medical centers, VistA Data Centers, and Non-Vista Data Centers performing centralized backup operations for all VA Medical Centers (VAMCs). This CommVault maintenance renewal is for an existing system that is already established and serves the purpose of disaster recovery of all VAMCs. This renewal will ensure standardized backup, file replication, disaster preparedness and recovery time objectives of all Office of Information and Technology (OIT) server-based data and applications in all VAMCs throughout the enterprise. The required CommVault software maintenance support shall include bug fixes, upgrade releases and enhancements, and periodic updates. This requirement also includes 18 optional tasks for up to 3,500 TB of software licenses and maintenance support that may be ordered within the base period and the option year, including Tier 1 Complete FET 1-100TB, Tier 2 Complete FET 100TB-1000TB, and Tier 3 Complete FET 1000TB+.

The period of performance is 12 months with one 12-month option period, along with optional tasks to procure additional licenses within each subscription period.

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 paragraph 8 of this document, it was determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for the brand name CommVault software maintenance support and software. Commvault is currently utilized as the sole software architecture to backup and/or archive data at approximately 170 VA Medical Centers, including over 1200 heath care facilities.

VA intends to expand this environment to approximately 10,000TB of additional data located at these facilities using a combination of new and existing hardware. The current CommVault infrastructure is only compatible with proprietary CommVault software licensing due to the proprietary elements of the existing infrastructure.

Specifically, the existing infrastructure only consists of CommVault software and hardware that can only communicate within that brand. Utilizing another brand name software under this action would result in interoperability and compatibility issues; specifically, any other brand name software will not communicate with the existing CommVault items.

Furthermore, use of any other brand name item would result in replacing all the existing CommVault software, which includes 7,000TB of software currently fielded that are not being replaced under this proposed action. This would result in a delay of 2 to 4 years to replace backups across VA, and result in duplicated costs of approximately $10M which would not be recoverable through competition. This figure does not include the time and investment the VA would have to incur to get to production. These estimates are based on previous efforts for similar procurements.

VA requires brand name CommVault software maintenance support on its existing CommVault software, and only CommVault, or a reseller, can provide the necessary bug fixes, upgrade releases and enhancements, and periodic updates because of the proprietary source code. No other software developer has the intellectual property rights to access and modify the CommVault source code, which is required in order to execute the needed bug fixes, upgrades and updates. Only CommVault or its resellers have access to CommVault’s proprietary software source code needed to provide the required software maintenance and ensure that the services provided are properly configured. This code is also required to develop and push updates and upgrades to the existing software. If any other source was to provide these software maintenance services without the CommVault proprietary source code, it would not be able to push upgrades to the existing software to fix and configure the software. This access is critical to meet VA’s need to maintain the CommVault software as operational.

Furthermore, based on this market research, there is no other software license that meets VA’s requirements to expand the currently implemented Commvault infrastructure. Specifically, the CommVault Application Suite is composed of only CommVault products and operates through CommVault’s proprietary code.

This proprietary constraint does not allow other brand name products to fully operate with the existing products currently fielded without severely comprising the operational integrity of the existing CommVault Application Suite. If another product was introduced, there would be interoperability and compatibility issues with the current Commvault architecture rendering the infrastructure unusable.

Another product’s software license, if utilized, would not be able to communicate with the currently implemented Commvault infrastructure. Moreover, acquisition of a different brand of software license would require a completely separate non-

Commvault infrastructure to support the existing application due to Commvault’s proprietary structures, protocols, software application programming interfaces, and different products. Additionally, new training for ITOPS support staff would have to be provided if a different brand of software is used. This would multiply the support costs required by ITOPS, require VA staff to be trained to learn the new application, and result in extensive delays and duplicated cost that would not be recoverable through competition.

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, it was determined that limited competition is viable among resellers for these brand name items. 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, 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), and 16.505(a)(4)(iii), the award notice for this action will be synopsized on the Federal Business Opportunities website and this justification will be made publicly available within 14 days of award.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: The Government will continue to conduct market research by continually reviewing competing software products to learn if there have been any changes in the marketplace that would enable future actions to be competed.

8. Market Research: Market research was conducted by VA technical experts in February 2019 which included internet searches and reviews of published technical data for backup software and software maintenance packages available from NetBackup and Symantec Backup Exec. As a result of the market research, the technical experts confirmed that the source code required to issue the bug fixes, upgrades and updates is proprietary to CommVault. While other backup software manufacturers exist, no other manufacturers can access the CommVault source code in order to maintain and support the existing software already installed and operating VA-wide in all respective medical centers, VistA Data Centers, and Non- Vista Data Centers performing centralized backup operations for all VAMCs. In addition, the Contract Specialist also contacted CommVault to determine whether its proprietary source code was for sale. CommVault advised on April 16, 2019 that this data is not for sale and CommVault has no plans to sell its source code. Based upon this research, the Government’s technical experts have determined that only CommVault brand name software maintenance support can meet all of VA’s requirements.

In April 2019, the Contract Specialist conducted market research to ascertain the extent of limited competition among resellers of the brand name CommVault software maintenance support. Through the use of the Provider Look-up tool on the NASA SEWP V GWAC website, four (4) Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSBs) were identified as resellers of the required

CommVault software maintenance support; therefore, limited competition is anticipated.

9. Other Facts: None.