JA CECLSA Redacted.pdf

Cisco Enterprise Collaboration License Support Agreement VA-25-00000391

JUSTIFICATION FOR OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION

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 the award of a firm-fixed-price brand name Cisco Systems, Inc. (Cisco) Enterprise Collaboration License Support Agreement (CECLSA) that will provide software licenses to support the renewal, expansion, and maintenance of existing Cisco network infrastructure systems.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The CECLSA will provide unlimited access to a Cisco enterprise suite of licensing products during the term of this agreement and will permit timely and efficient activation of licenses on Cisco products owned and/or controlled by VA. The proposed action is required to maintain and support VA network infrastructure as well as provide capabilities to support facility network expansion in an on-demand format by authorized VA users. VA expects a 10-15% expansion over the life of the contract.

This procurement seeks to continue license renewals and Cisco Gold Partner level premium support for vital Cisco products inclusive of Cisco Collaboration Flex Plan, Cisco Intersight Infrastructure Service, Cisco Modeling Labs (CML), Cloud Services Router (CSR) 1000V Virtual Routers, Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) services, and Virtual Cisco Unified Session Initiation Protocol Proxy (vCUSP) services. All software licensing and support coverage shall include technical remote assistance 24 hours a day seven days a week, patches, bug fixes, and minor and major software upgrades. Support shall also include access to the Cisco Technical Assistance Center (TAC) 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Contract may also require contractor to provide and support documentation efforts for VA security assessment and authorization (A&A).

The VA enterprise network is a critical data transport that connects all users located at VA Central Office (VACO), VA Medical Centers (VAMC), Regional Offices, Community- Based Out-Patient Clinics (CBOC), and external medical, administrative, and financial entities that are required to maintain data integrity and reliability in supporting our Veterans. The VA Internet Connections and Wide-Area Network Backbone consists primarily of Cisco systems equipment and associated software. The proposed action provides an enterprise license agreement for VA to renew and/or expand term-based licenses for deployment of Cisco Collaboration Flex, Cisco Intersight and CML infrastructures. In addition, the proposed procurement includes software support for issues regarding the licensing and software updates provided under the agreement. The critical role of the licenses and software is that it provides the VA unified communications and collaboration to all VA users for Webex for collaboration both onsite and remote between VA and non-VA employees with an audience size of up to 5,000 users. VA uses Cisco Webex to connect to over 1,500 various video appliances and conference room video systems, as well as software collaborations suites used internally and externally to VA. The current licensing for Webex allows for up to 26,000 total active meeting hosts, inclusive of both toll-free dial-in audio and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). The VA has call centers which include Veterans Benefits Administration, White House Call center, VA Cemetery call centers and various medical call centers throughout VA that support over 64 million calls a year. The VA uses Cisco Call managers which support 350,000 IP telephones that are distributed across the enterprise. These IP telephones connect to Cisco Call manager software, as well as softphones. VA has a significant investment of over 3,000 Cisco Branded Servers, and the management suite, Cisco Intersight, is required to provide remote Keyboard, Video, Mouse (KVM) control as well as remote configuration and monitoring of these critical communication tools. VA uses Cisco Intersight to manage configurations, push security patches and monitor hardware for Cisco branded servers, which automates the management of these servers and enhancing security and threat response to automate effective management. CML are utilized to simulate the VA network for both Cisco and non-Cisco equipment, which creates a pre-production environment for configuration changes, security remediation and testing. The CSR1000v virtual routers are utilized within the VA Enterprise Cloud environment to provide secure connectivity between Amazon AWS GovCloud and the TIC gateways in support of FedRAMP approved cloud services. Cisco Unified Border Element (CUBE) is a session border controller solution that connects VA to its Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) which connects VA with phone providers and phone traffic. Virtual Cisco Unified SIP Proxy (vCUSP) is a SIP proxy server to help the VA aggregate Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) elements into a centralized architecture to simplify the management of the VA enterprise network.

The license types provided under the CECLSA are subscription-based. The period of performance of the CECLSA will be one 12-month base period and four 12-month option periods with ten optional tasks if exercised. The total estimated price of the proposed action is , inclusive of options and optional tasks.

4. Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting other than full and open competition is 41 U.S.C. 3304(a)(1) as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.302-

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: Based on market research, as described in Section 8 of this document, it has been determined that limited competition primarily consists of Cisco devices and associated software that requires Cisco licenses and technical support services to maintain the integrity, reliability and operability of the devices and software. Due to the proprietary nature of the Cisco equipment and software, these licenses are peculiar to a single vendor, Cisco. No other brand name support service provider has the proprietary data to perform the necessary support services. Cisco owns the intellectual property rights to the Cisco network infrastructure devices and software, including Cisco networking, telephony, unified communications, and unified computing devices. Cisco is the only provider that can generate the specific infrastructure without disruption.

network, which consists primarily of Cisco devices and software, has the most current support updates to defend against potential operational impacts, while also requiring fully interoperable equipment and software replacements in the event of a specific application failure. Without current licensing and technical support services, critical unified communications, and unified computing devices and applications will be eliminated; thereby, placing the sustainability and reliability of VA data-connected services at high risk. The licenses required to maintain this operation and security posture are peculiar to only Cisco licenses. Other licenses will not interoperate with current Cisco infrastructure or current Cisco licensing. No other licenses or services can be modified to meet these requirements.

Currently, VA utilizes over 420,000 currently installed Cisco brand name devices for enterprise switching, collaboration, enterprise routing, cloud networking, cloud & compute, wireless networking, and service provider routing. These devices currently utilize Cisco licensing features to function effectively. Due to the proprietary nature of the Cisco devices and licensing, no other manufacturer can provide licensing and associated features that can function on the existing Cisco devices. Use of any other licensing is compatible or interoperable with Cisco devices. VA is not replacing its current Cisco infrastructure. Replacing Cisco devices would result in extensive procurement and installation efforts for the aforementioned Cisco devices that will be covered by the proposed CECLSA. The CECLSA provides support to 420,000+ Cisco devices. The predicted useful life of more than 80% of the VA owned Cisco equipment will be five or more years as the devices have either no Cisco-declared end of life date or have sufficient projected life spans.

The duplicative effort to replace these devices would cause estimated delivery delays of seven years and estimated duplicated costs in excess of $242M. This $242M estimate is based on a combined estimated calculation that replacing 380k phones will cost about $152M, CML will cost roughly $10M and replacing 4,000 servers will cost approximately $80M. It is not anticipated that this cost would be recovered through competition. These estimates are based on previous acquisitions as well as VA subject such replacement would need to occur in a phased approach that is estimated to take approximately seven years cumulatively. All Cisco devices in the VA environment could security and operational posture.

The required Cisco licensing is proprietary to Cisco and is only available through Cisco or its authorized resellers. The VA network is a critical data transport that connects all users located at VACO, VAMCs, Regional Offices, CBOCs, and external medical, administrative, and financial entities that are required to maintain data integrity and reliability in supporting our Veterans. License activation and feature keys are tied directly to the serial number of the device and cannot be generated by any other entity but Cisco or an authorized reseller. The Cisco license and key generation system is a unique, patented system wholly owned and maintained by Cisco. No other manufacturer can create, simulate, or produce by any means these unique license activation and feature keys. In addition, the license activation and feature keys cannot be transferred between devices (except in the case of a hardware failure). If VA must replace a device due to a hardware failure, and it is currently covered by Cisco, only the Cisco Licensing Team can transfer the license to a replacement device. Without the required licensing, VA would lose its ability to interact with veterans and employees resulting in a decreased operational effectiveness, and increasing the chance of data-loss which places VA data at risk.

VA requires the authorized reseller to be a Cisco Gold Partner in order to provide the premium level of technical support required for CECLSA. Cisco only provides resellers who are Gold Level Partners with a successful escalations management framework to assist the VA with Cisco TAC ticket escalation though an internal and partner process, ensuring the VA has robust response to issues. Gold Partners work with VA in a large scale to evolve to a more proactive, preventative long-term model which will increase uptime and predictability of the VA Cisco Inventory. Only Cisco Gold Partners have access to the Cisco TAC 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and only Gold Level Partners is a Cisco verified prioritization standard to ensure that appropriate service is provided to customers through a documented and robust escalation process which escalates problems through the quickly to Cisco for resolution. Both of these elements provide critical support required for the VA IT Enterprise. Furthermore, authorized resellers require an additional Advanced Technology Partner (ATP) which is deployed across VA. Cisco requires authorized resellers to hold a Cisco ATP certification to design, optimize and support UCCE technology due to the critical support

ATP certified resellers deliver specific skills, practices, and capabilities to the end user community above and beyond basic entry level product certifications, which is required for the UCCE platform. Accordingly, only a UCCE ATP certified reseller is capable of providing support for UCCE technology utilized by VA. Based on the above information, have the required ATP certification and who have the required to maintain Cisco equipment and software can ensure critical security updates are provided to the Government. The UCCE technology supports critical programs across VA. Accordingly, it requires a Cisco reseller with specific skills, practices capabilities only certified by Cisco to ensure proper support. Failure to adequately support the underlying unified communications infrastructure for these programs will

Due to the criticality of equipment and applications, as well as identified security threats and operational issues, support updates and current licenses for Cisco devices and applications must be available. Cisco equipment is required to support, interconnect and conduct networking traffic for virtually all computers and other information technology equipment components, Veterans Health Information Systems & Technology Architecture (VistA), VistA Imaging Systems, desktop computers, voice, computer room an authorized reseller, can provide licensing for Cisco devices. Other manufacturers, such as Juniper and Aruba, only provide licensing for their specific devices and are not compatible or interoperable with Cisco devices. Also, VA SMEs regularly reviews industry trade publications and conduct internet research to ascertain if any other brand name software solution is available that is capable of interoperating with the existing Cisco devices in place within VA. Based on all these market research efforts, the Government's SMEs have concluded that only Cisco has access to the necessary source code for software licensing and support that is compatible with the existing VA Cisco infrastructure. Only Cisco brand solutions can fully meet the VA's requirements.

VA released its first RFI on October 19, 2023, via SAM.gov. This RFI was extended once and ultimately closed on November 15, 2023. The RFI sought to identify Contractors who are authorized resellers of the required Cisco SmartNet and business critical services, and identify any non-Cisco resellers whose services and/or solutions could provide, or be modified to provide, the services and support required for the Cisco hardware and software (e.g., Cisco networking gear, Cisco Telephony, Unified Communications products, Cisco Telepresence Equipment and Unified Computing/Data Center devices, Collaboration Flex services, and applications, and Cisco Server and Virtualizations hardware) that are currently deployed, and/or will be deployed, throughout VA over the next five years. The RFI yielded 11 responses. No RFI respondents indicated they could provide any other than brand name solution and/or services other than the Cisco services to meet the Government's requirement.

Therefore, the RFI did not yield any alternative products that can meet, or whose solutions can be modified to meet, the Government's requirements, other than Cisco or authorized Cisco resellers.

9. Other Facts: None.

Concurrence

In my role as Head of the Contracting Activity, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby concur on the acquisition of the Cisco Enterprise Collaboration License Support Agreement (CECLSA) that will provide software licenses to support the renewal, network infrastructure systems, on an other than full and open competition basis pursuant to the statutory 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.

Approval

Based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the acquisition of the Cisco Enterprise Collaboration License Support Agreement (CECLSA) that will provide software licenses to network infrastructure systems, on an other than full and open competition basis pursuant to the statutory 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.