JA DELL Storage and Server Consolidated Maintenance - final to post.pdf

DELL/EMC Premium Hardware and Software Maintenance Support

Control Number VA-25-0000581

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 issuance of a firm-fixed-price delivery order (DO) under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for renewal of brand name DELL/EMC premium hardware and software maintenance support on existing VA owned DELL/EMC Storage solutions deployed across the VA Enterprise and procurement of DELL/EMC training credits to be used for virtual training for all hardware installed, hardware management utilities, and storage metrics.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA, Office of Information and Technology, Information Technology Operations and Services, Infrastructure Operations, Solutions Delivery has a requirement for brand name DELL/EMC virtual training and support services for hardware and software maintenance for existing VA owned DELL/EMC systems supporting the VA storage infrastructure. The hardware and software maintenance renewal provides the ability to store virtualized data as part of VA’s virtualization infrastructure. In addition, it is used to meet a majority of the network-attached storage, compute and data protection needs. The software maintenance shall provide direct access to DELL/EMC technical support via telephone and email 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The support will also provide continued access to product documentation, knowledge base documentation, user forum, and software and firmware updates to include major releases, point releases, newly released features, service releases, security releases of applicable software/firmware, and bug fixes, on-site response, and installation of software releases. Virtual training shall be provided for all hardware installed, hardware management utilities, and storage metrics.

Training shall provide an overview of hardware components, routine management operations, and troubleshooting of common issues. The period of performance shall be October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2025 with four 12-month option periods that may be exercised at the Government’s discretion. Additionally, this requirement includes one optional task for 480,000 training credits that may be exercised during the base and/or option periods at the Government’s discretion. The total period of performance shall not exceed 60 months. The total estimated price of the proposed action is $3,638,815.00, inclusive of the optional task and all option periods.

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

DELL/EMC Premium Hardware and Control Number VA-25-0000581 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 market research, as described in Section 8 of this document, it was determined that limited competition is available for this procurement among DELL/EMC resellers. VA currently utilizes DELL/EMC brand hardware and software to support storage operations throughout the VA enterprise. The existing VA owned storage solution is vital to providing high-availability virtualized services for their respective facilities including fault-tolerance and in-use migrations.

No other hardware and software manufacturer can provide the required maintenance and support services currently in place without the required source code which is proprietary to DELL/EMC. Only DELL/EMC hardware and software maintenance support can be utilized for DELL/EMC hardware and software products as DELL/EMC is the only supplier of the hardware replacement parts, software updates (to include all version updates and bug fixes) and technical support. No other source is capable of providing the required software maintenance of the existing VA owned devices as only DELL/EMC or its resellers have access to the proprietary source code necessary to provide the required software upgrades and updates to include major releases, point releases, and service releases of applicable software. Since the software, which is included as part of the hardware devices, is proprietary, a legal restriction is placed on access to the software code that is required in order to develop updates and patches to the software. Without this access, it is impossible to modify the software code as necessary to provide the required patches and updates. Access to this code is also required to ensure the services provided to the software are properly configured. In addition, no other brand name replacement parts meet VA’s form, fit and function requirements other than DELL/EMC. Specifically, no other parts can operate and fit within the existing VA owned DELL/EMC systems. Use of any other parts will result in compatibility and interoperability issues, as the parts would not integrate with the currently fielded hardware and software, which is included as part of the hardware devices. As a result, a complete replacement of the entire existing VA owned DELL/EMC infrastructure would be required, including enterprise storage systems, network switches and migration services to the new hardware. This would result in extensive delivery and migration delays, as well as duplicative costs that would not be recovered through competition. The cost to replace the current DELL/EMC storage systems, a complete replacement of 21 storage systems, is estimated to cost over $6M, which would not be recovered through competition.

Furthermore, it would take approximately 12 months to fully implement due to delivery of new hardware, testing, and scheduling of downtime with end users to complete migration services. This, in turn, will impact and significantly compromise VA’s ability to perform its mission. Failure to maintain training and operational readiness of DELL/EMC storage will inhibit OI&T from operating the infrastructure successfully.

This will adversely affect the implementation of the current application technologies improving day-to-day activities for VA employees, as well as expanding on the access and care afforded to Veterans and their caregivers. Furthermore, training can only be provided by a DELL/EMC reseller, as the training provided is from the Original

Equipment Manufacture catalog, and no other source is authorized to have access to the proprietary source code necessary to provide the required training.

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 DELL/EMC premium hardware and software maintenance 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, 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), and 16.505(a)(4)(iii), the award notice for this action will be synopsized on the Contract Opportunities website and this 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 perform market research to determine if there are any products and/or source providers available that will enable future requirements to be competed.

8. Market Research: VA technical subject matter experts conducted web-based market research in March 2024. VA subject matter experts reviewed similar hardware and software maintenance and training from alternative manufacturers such as Hewlett Packard (HP), Hitachi, NetApp and International Business Machines (IBM) to determine whether they can provide software or hardware maintenance support and training on the existing VA owned DELL/EMC hardware. Following review of these sources, VA’s technical team determined that NetApp, IBM, Hitachi and HP can only provide service for their proprietary hardware and software and that they are not able to provide maintenance on DELL/EMC proprietary hardware and software.

Additionally, only DELL/EMC can provide training for all proprietary DELL/EMC hardware installed, hardware management utilities, and storage metrics. Based on this review, it was determined that no other source, besides DELL/EMC or one of its resellers, can provide hardware and software maintenance support and training for the VA’s DELL/EMC software or hardware as every other source lacked access to the proprietary source code necessary to provide the required support. Only DELL/EMC or its resellers can provide hardware and software maintenance, training and technical support of DELL/EMC proprietary hardware and software products.

Furthermore, the Office of Strategy Sourcing issued a Request for Information (RFI) on the NASA SEWP V GWAC website on February 13, 2024. The RFI closed on March 6, 2024, with a total of 6 responses received; 3 responses were received from Small Businesses and 3 responses were received from Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSBs). Based on the information gathered from the RFI, the Government’s technical experts determined that 4 (3 SDVOSBs and 1 Small Business) of the 6 respondents were capable of meeting the Government’s requirement. The 2 respondents who were found not capable proposed third party support that does not provide software maintenance as outlined in the Product Description, as such their proposed solution does not “provide access to software updates or offer support that provides software and firmware updates to include major releases, point releases, newly released features, service releases, security releases of applicable software/firmware, bug fixes, on-site response and installation of software releases.”

Additional market research was conducted in April 2024, identifying 127 contract holders that are resellers of brand name DELL/EMC hardware and software maintenance support by utilizing the NASA SEWP Provider Lookup Tool. Of these 127 resellers, 13 are Historically Under-utilized Business Zones, 22 are verified SDVOSBs, 52 are Small Businesses, and 40 are Large Businesses.

Furthermore, NASA SEWP has a dynamic catalog where line items can be added based on customer requests provided that the required item or service is within the scope of the NASA SEWP V contract suite and therefore additional competition may be achieved.

Based on the results of the review set forth above, there is reasonable expectation that two or more SDVOSBs will be able to provide the required hardware and software maintenance support. Therefore, given that there is a reasonable expectation of competition between at least two capable SDVOSBs, it has been determined that the subject Request for Quote will be released as a SDVOSB set-aside under the existing NASA SEWP V contract vehicle, under the North American Industry Classification System code 541519.

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.

Thomas Riess Date: _______________________

Storage Division Chief Signature: ____________________________

11. Fair and Reasonable Cost Determination: I hereby determine that the anticipated price to the Government for this contract action will be fair and reasonable based on expected competition. Additionally, proposed prices will be compared to NASA SEWP catalog prices. Finally, and if necessary, comparison with the Independent Government Cost Estimate and further price analysis through comparison with similar commercial services will be conducted.

Heather Utt Date: ________________________________

Procuring Contracting Officer Signature: ____________________________

12. Procuring Contracting Officer Certification: I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Heather Utt Date: ________________________________

Procuring Contracting Officer Signature: ____________________________

Approval

In my role as procuring activity Advocate for Competition, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the acquisition of brand name DELL/EMC premium hardware and software maintenance support 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.

Date: ____________ Signature: _________________________________ Jason Bullen Advocate for Competition Technology Acquisition Center

Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics