S02 JnA Commvault Redacted.pdf

Control Number VA-25-00039043

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 to be issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for renewal of brand name Commvault software licenses including maintenance support and ancillary support services.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA, Office of Information and Technology (OIT) Information Technology (IT) Operations and Services has a requirement to renew over 4,000 terabytes of brand name Commvault Cloud Backup and Recovery software licenses including maintenance support and ancillary support services for data protection and backup in support of critical sites and the National Tapeless Backup Encryption (TBE) project. Commvault software is currently installed and operating VA-wide in medical centers, Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) Data Centers, and non-Vista Data Centers performing centralized backup operations for all VA Medical Centers (VAMC). This Commvault software and maintenance renewal is for existing software that serves the purpose of disaster recovery for all VAMCs. OIT Infrastructure Operations (IO) requires backup and recovery software licenses that are interoperable with VA’s existing Commvault infrastructure and meet VA’s standardized backup, file replication, disaster preparedness, and recovery time objectives for all OIT server-based data and applications for all VAMCs throughout the enterprise.

The required brand name Commvault maintenance support shall include bug fixes, upgrade releases and enhancements and periodic updates. Software maintenance includes periodic updates, access to all upgrade releases (both minor and major), bug fix releases, enhancements, and corrections to the software, along with technical support. This level of support provides 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year coverage, including holidays, to resolve issues and maintain continuous data protection and compliance across the VA’s enterprise infrastructure.

In addition, OIT IO requires brand name Commvault ancillary support services for Enterprise Elite Success to decrease response times for high and critical severity issues that have major impact across the enterprise. Performance includes a base period of 12 months, 4 12-month option periods, 26 optional tasks in the base period and in each option period, and the option to extend services for 6 months.

The optional tasks are included to cover additional ancillary support, licenses, nodes, and gap protection that must be interoperable with VA’s existing backup and recovery infrastructure to accommodate the anticipated increased needs over the period of performance. The total estimated price of the proposed action is

, inclusive of all option periods and optional tasks.

Commvault software licenses including maintenance and ancillary support services

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 on market research, as described in Section 8 of this document, it was determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers of the brand name Commvault term software licenses including maintenance support, and ancillary support services. Commvault is currently used as the sole software architecture to backup and/or archive data VA-wide at approximately 190 VAMCs, including over 1,200 heath care facilities. The fielded Commvault infrastructure is only compatible with brand name Commvault software licensing, maintenance, and ancillary support services due to the proprietary elements of VA’s existing infrastructure, including Commvault’s proprietary source code. Specifically, the existing data protection and backup in support of critical sites and the National TBE project infrastructure consists only of Commvault software and hardware which can only communicate with Commvault products and services. Using another brand name software licenses, software maintenance, or ancillary support services would result in interoperability and compatibility issues; specifically, any other brand name software will not be able to communicate with the existing Commvault infrastructure. Access to the proprietary Commvault source code is essential for developing and deploying updates and upgrades to the existing Commvault infrastructure and software.

Without this proprietary code, no third party could effectively provide maintenance services, nor could they apply necessary fixes or enhancements to the current environment. Using an alternative brand would require a full replacement of the existing Commvault infrastructure currently deployed across the VA enterprise. Such a transition is estimated to result in an up to five-year delay to establish backup capabilities, during which time the VA would incur duplicate infrastructure costs estimated at $100 million; these costs would not be recoverable through competition.

These estimates take into consideration that the VA would need to invest significant time and resources to procure, deploy, and operationalize a new backup solution.

This would involve acquiring both new software and hardware for all 190 VAMCs and core data centers. Once acquired, the systems would need to be shipped, provisioned (contingent upon power availability at each VAMC), installed, and configured for local backups. Existing systems would have to remain in production for a minimum of 90 days to allow for data aging in compliance with OIT Disaster Recovery policies and current Service Level Agreements for data availability. Then, new training for Infrastructure Operations Platforms Support staff would have to be provided; to learn the new application and this is included in the above time and cost estimates. Disruptions associated with not having an adequate number of Commvault licenses and the Commvault maintenance will impact VA’s ability to be meet the National Institute Standards of Technology 800-53.

These estimates are based on previous efforts for similar procurements. In addition, as no other vendor has proprietary rights to access Commvault’s software source code would create an additional risk of loss of access to existing data for the TBE project. Not having a robust backup and recovery application has the potential to impact Patient care operations for over nine million Veterans. Without this renewal, the VA would lose the ability to recover mission-critical systems, including the Veterans complete electronic medical record. This would cause immediate and severe disruptions to Veteran care—impacting clinical systems, appointment scheduling, prescription access, and claims processing. Data loss or system downtime would compromise care delivery and breach federal data protection standards.

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 viable among authorized resellers for the brand name Commvault software and maintenance. In accordance with FAR 16.505(a)(4)(iii)(A)(1), this justification will be provided with the solicitation on the NASA SEWP V GWAC website to notify all prospective offerors.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: The Government will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are any changes in the marketplace that would enable future actions to be competed.

8. Market Research: VA technical experts conducted market research in February 2025 to ascertain the ability of other, similar backup and recovery software licenses including maintenance support, and ancillary support services to meet VA’s needs.

Additional market research was conducted through internet searches and reviews of published technical data for backup software and software maintenance packages available from NetBackup and Symantec Backup Exec. VA technical experts analyzed these competitors’ capabilities and determined they cannot meet the Government’s requirements without the substantial duplication of costs and time referenced in Section 5 of this document. Specifically, the technical experts confirmed that no other vendor’s source code is able to interoperate with VA’s existing backup and recovery infrastructure, issue the appropriate application bug fixes, and upgrades to the existing infrastructure. While other backup software manufacturers exist, no other manufacturers can access the Commvault source code to operate, maintain, and support the VA’s existing infrastructure already installed and operating VA-wide in all VAMCs, as well as access the existing data.

Based upon the above market research, the Government’s technical experts have determined that only Commvault brand name software licenses including maintenance support, and ancillary support services can meet all of VA’s requirements.

Additionally, the Contract Specialist (CS) conducted market research in March 2025 using the NASA SEWP V GWAC market research and provider lookup tools to determine what vendors are capable of providing the full requirement. Based on this market research, the CS identified several Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses that are Commvault authorized resellers able to provide the required brand name products to meet the Government’s needs for this effort.

9. Other Facts: None.

Office of General Counsel Review

I have reviewed this document and find it legally sufficient, based on the representations set forth in the documents and, if any, attachments. The Head of the Contracting Activity’s approval is an independently supported decision not wholly reliant on the legal sufficiency determination.

Date

Office of General Counsel

HCA Approval

In my role as Head of the Contracting Activity, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the acquisition of Commvault software licenses including maintenance support, and ancillary support 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.

Date

Head of the Contracting Activity Technology Acquisition Center Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics Department of Veterans Affairs y

May 23, 2025