JA_Award Notice_Redacted 1.pdf

Unified Communications Brand name Cisco Voice over Internet Protocol Servers

VA-24-00065504

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 issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for the procurement of brand name Cisco Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) servers and installation services.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services VA Office of Information and Technology (OIT), Development, Security, and Operations (DevSecOps) Connectivity & Collaboration Services (CCS) Unified Communications (UC) has a requirement for brand name Cisco VoIP servers to replace End of Life (EoL) End of Service (EoS) equipment at the Durham VAMC, Huntington VAMC, Lexington VAMC, North Florida HCS, St. Louis HCS, VACO, Loma Linda ACC, TIC East and TIC West. This effort will update the currently fielded Cisco voice system to enable and sustain operations. The Contractor shall install all equipment and include any associated network cables for the servers to be fully operational. Servers shall have the VA provided IP Addresses assigned to the management ports of each server. All equipment shall be delivered to the site and installed within 90 days of award. The proposed cost of this effort is

4. Statutory Authority: Pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 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 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 upon market research, as described in section 8 of this document, it was determined that only brand name Cisco VoIP servers have the capability to satisfy this requirement. The current Voice System (VS) infrastructure in place within VA’s Enterprise Voice Network consists of several Cisco Unified Call Manager (CUCM) clusters. Procuring and using brand name Cisco Model UCS C240M7 VoIP servers will ensure proper integration with any existing CUCM cluster across the enterprise. Cisco servers and CUCMs utilize a proprietary database structure specific only to Cisco hardware. The required Cisco servers will integrate into an existing CUCM that no other brand hardware would be compatible with. Additionally, VA already owns the associated licensing required to ensure the Cisco servers are fully functional. VA has an enterprise licensing agreement with Cisco which allows the replacement of these servers without the need to re-negotiate licensing; therefore, only Cisco or an authorized reseller can provide the necessary products for the replacement of the existing CUCM servers currently deployed throughout the VA’s Enterprise Voice Network. If VA were to procure different VS products, even if another existed with qualifications that met VA’s functional needs, it would result in a duplication of costs, estimated to be approximately per site, to completely replace VA’s current existing Cisco infrastructure consisting of the CUCM hardware and licensing. These costs would not be recovered through competition. The compatibility and interoperability issues would prove insurmountable and impractical from a technical and operational standpoint, since it would require VA to purchase an entirely new VS rather than expand on the existing infrastructure. If VA were to not purchase these replacement servers, support for the existing servers would be unobtainable, replacement parts would not be available from the manufacturer, and additional gray market support would have to be obtained above and beyond the manufacturer support VA already has in place for the CUCM servers VA operates.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in the market research section of this document. It was determined that limited competition is viable among authorized resellers for the required brand name Cisco VoIP servers and installation services. 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 Contracting 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 to ascertain if there are changes in the marketplace that would enable future actions to be competed.

8. Market Research: The Government’s technical experts conducted market research during March 2024 by reviewing similar hardware products to ascertain if other brands could meet VA’s functionality requirements. Specifically, the Government’s technical experts conducted web-based research and discovered that while other VoIP hardware solutions from alternative manufacturers such as Blackbox and Brocade exist, the products do not meet VA’s requirements because only Cisco or an authorized reseller has access to the proprietary database specific to the replacement requirement to interconnect with the VS’s in place throughout VA’s infrastructure. Therefore, at present there is no other hardware available in the market place that can meet this requirement.

In addition, VA networking Subject Matter Experts regularly review industry trade publications and conduct internet research to ascertain if any other brand name hardware is available. Based on all of these market research efforts, the Government’s technical experts have determined that only the aforementioned Cisco brand name VoIP servers can meet all of the VA’s needs.

Additional market research was conducted by Government representatives in May 2024 by utilizing the NASA SEWP V Market Research Tool. The tool yielded 127 contract holders in Groups B, B(2), C, and D, that are Cisco resellers on the NASA SEWP V GWAC. The tool identified 36 Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses, 2 Veteran-Owned Small Businesses, 12 Hub-Zone Small Businesses, 22 Women Owned Small Businesses, 27 Small Business and 28 Large Businesses. Furthermore, the NASA SEWP V GWAC has a dynamic catalog where line items can be added based on customer requests; therefore, as long as the required item or service is within scope of the NASA SEWP V GWAC, items and services can be added to the catalog on a daily basis.

9. Other Facts: None.

Approval

In my role as procuring activity Advocate for Competition, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the acquisition of procurement of brand name Cisco Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) servers and installation services on an other than fair opportunity basis pursuant to the authority cited in Section 4 above, subject to availability of funds, and provided that the property and services herein described have otherwise been authorized for acquisition.