9 Brand Name Justification_NR-MA0000-23-01451JM0.pdf

Version 2.0

SINGLE SOURCE DETERMINATION USING

SIMPLIFIED ACQUISITION PROCEDURES (SAP)

FOR AN ACTION NOT EXCEEDING THE SIMPLIFIED ACQUISITION THRESHOLD

(AUTHORITY: FAR 13.106-1(b)(1))

(PR – NR-MA0000-23-01451)

1. Agency and contracting activity. Department of Commerce, National Oceanic Atmospheric

Administration (NOAA), Office of Oceanic Atmospheric Research (OAR); Field Delegate.

2. Description of supplies or services required to meet agency needs (including the estimated value).

Renewal of current DNN (formerly DotNetNuke) CMS software, to support the public facing-websites and intranet site for OAR. The software is the website framework which runs on a web server and maintains these websites. It must support the content management system (CMS) architecture that is currently in use so users (NOAA employees and contractors) can continue to add content to the websites with little or no training. DNN software is easily supported by the existing network architecture and staff at OAR ITMO; namely Windows Server, Microsoft IIS, and Microsoft SQL Server.

The Enterprise license is required to allow functionality for the Intranet site Hub. The Professional license will allow a consolidation of three existing public-facing web servers into one, thus reducing costs. An Enterprise development license is required to maintain an environment for building and testing future enhancements and upgrades.

The intent of this acquisition is to renew current licenses under a Firm Fixed Price contract. Current licenses expire 13 September 2023; period of performance to be 14 September 2023 through 13 September 2024. Estimated

3. Identification of the single source or the brand name to be solicited.

Certified reseller of DNN Corp. Verification required.

DNN Corp 155 Bovet Road, Suite 201 San Mateo, CA 94402

4. Supporting rationale. Only one source or brand name is reasonably available as detailed below:

Brand Name – This particular brand name is essential to the requirement and market research indicates similar products do not meet or cannot be modified to meet agency needs.

Close competitors to DNN were researched, including WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. Evaluation of these software packages was easily acquired for research without purchase. We found DNN to have a similar price point to go live compared to these packages, but DNN was superior for the customizability, support, alignment with our existing network architecture, and easier training (e.g.

technical staff and users). Our current environment already hosts 20 DNN websites. To change providers now would include a great effort to migrate our web environment to a new system, re-train our development staff and re-train our content managers/editors.

NR-MA0000-23-01451

A custom solution was also considered, but the cost was too high to justify our needs. To accomplish this, we would need to invest in a number of products and further training for our developers putting the cost of this option much higher than the DNN solution.

5. Market Research.

WordPress, Joomla, Drupal and custom solutions were all researched for this task. These competitors were selected due to their prevalence within the market space. Each competitor’s online documentation was evaluated for cost, ease of setup, ability to perform within a Microsoft environment, and most importantly ease of content updates. While the costs of each were close to each other, it became apparent that DNN’s ability to comply with a Microsoft environment and its clear content updating processes provided for a superior customer experience