BMC Code Pipeline - Redacted JA Final.pdf

Control Number VA-25-00019658

JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs

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 task order to be issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement V (SEWP) Government wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for brand name BMC Software Inc. (BMC) software subscription licenses, software maintenance, training, migration, and support services.

3. Description of Supplies or Services: The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Office of Information and Technology (OIT), Infrastructure Operations (IO), Mainframe Service Line requires brand name BMC Automated Mainframe Intelligence (AMI) DevX Code Pipeline software subscription per enterprise and 100 concurrent users’ licenses, support, migration services, and training to support VA’s Austin Information Technology Center (AITC) applications. This software supports multiple applications at AITC. In addition, OIT IO Mainframe Service Line requires migration from the current application, education training, and support services for the aforementioned brand name BMC software licenses. VA requires a continuous integration/continuous delivery for its mainframe to allow developers to understand quickly and safely, build, test, and deploy mainframe code while allowing mainframe code pipeline to be secure, stable, and streamlined throughout the development and operations lifecycle. VA also requires that the products provide functions required to support the IO datacenter mainframe computing platform performance management and batch processing. If these requirements are not met then Veteran benefits such as education, compensation, and healthcare would not be able to be compensated or paid to Veterans or their families.

The required software is used in processing the eligibility of a Veteran for benefits. The software then prompts the system to calculate how much a Veteran and/or their families receive. Financial Management Services utilizes this to process invoices and pay vendors. The software maintenance is necessary to ensure the brand name BMC software licenses managed by IO receive all necessary software upgrades and updates to include major releases, point releases, service releases and security releases on a quarterly basis, and/or within 48 hours when a high-risk vulnerability fix becomes available. The software maintenance support for the licenses shall include 24 hour per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year assistance via phone and email, as well as all software upgrades and patches. The BMC products provide functions required to support the existing IO datacenter mainframe computing platform performance management and batch processing. The current IO infrastructure is based on existing BMC licenses. The software maintenance and updates are necessary to ensure the software remains operational and secure.

BMC AMI DevX Code Pipeline Control Number VA-25-00019658

The period of performance for this action shall be one, 12-month base period, with two, 12-month option periods, and two optional tasks, to be exercised at the Government’s discretion. All software subscription licenses shall be delivered within 10 days of award.

The total estimated price of the proposed action, inclusive of all options, 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 justification, it was determined that limited competition is available among resellers for the required brand name BMC products.

BMC provides a continuous integration/continuous delivery for its mainframe to allow developers to quickly and safely understand, build, test, and deploy mainframe code while allowing mainframe code pipeline to be secure, stable, and streamlined throughout the DevOps lifecycle. The BMC products provide functions required to support the IO datacenter mainframe computing platform performance management and batch processing. The current IO infrastructure is based on existing BMC licenses. Without the BMC software supporting the platform then the Veteran benefits such as education, compensation, and healthcare would not be able to be compensated or paid to Veterans or their families. The software is used in processing the eligibility of a Veteran for benefits. The software then prompts the system to calculate how much a Veteran and/or their families receive. Without BMC the Financial Management Services would not be able to process invoices and pay any vendors. Only BMC or its resellers can provide BMC AMI DevX Code Pipeline software subscription per enterprise and 100 concurrent users licenses and support required to perform seamless code management. Access to the proprietary software code is required for the provisioning of the software as well as maintenance support inclusive of, troubleshooting, updates, fixes, patches, and upgrades. The software and maintenance services are vital to VA for continued sustainment of the VA’s ability to perform concurrent application development. The brand name BMC AMI DevX Code Pipeline software maintenance is required for minor software upgrades and patches. These upgrades/patches provide new feature sets, address program errors in prior versions, and provide security enhancements. VA requires upgrades and patches for its existing BMC Code Pipeline software and only BMC, or an authorized reseller, can provide the necessary software upgrades and patches because of the propriety source code required to develop and implement software updates. Since the software is proprietary, a legal restriction is placed on access to the software code that is required in order to develop upgrades and patches to the software. Without this access, it is impossible to modify the software code as necessary to provide the required patches and upgrades. Access to this code is also needed to ensure all the services provided, including the migration services, are completed, and properly configured. For this reason, no other source other than BMC or an authorized reseller can provide the required technical support for the requirement, such as assistance via phone and email, as well as all software upgrades and patches. Due to these proprietary restrictions, the use of any other software maintenance provider would necessitate the complete replacement of the existing BMC infrastructure in place. The estimated cost and time for such a replacement would be $6,000,000.00 and 14 months and is based on historical implementation efforts of similar size. These estimated duplicative costs would not be recovered through competition. Veteran benefits such as education, compensation, and healthcare would not be able to be compensated or paid to the Veterans or their families. Financial Management Services would not be able to pay any vendors. If Veterans are unable to receive benefits such as education, the possibility of the veteran being disenrolled in current education class(es) or training program. Veterans not being able to provide basic needs for themselves and/or families such as housing, food, transportation, and receive healthcare. Financial Services would be unable to properly review and process vendor payments potentially causing issues with nonpayment to vendors for services provided.

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 BMC AMI DevX Code Pipeline software, as well as software maintenance and support. In accordance with FAR 6.505(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: 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: In August 2024 through February 2025, the Government’s technical experts conducted market research by reviewing similar software tools through internet research to include IBM Developer for Z, Apache Subversion, and Jenkins. These products were not found to have the ability to interoperate with the existing mainframe VA infrastructure. While these software developers provide products that perform similar functions, they are not configured to work with the required interfaced solutions. Selecting an alternate product would require replacement of the existing infrastructure leading to substantial duplication of cost and time as detailed above.

Additionally, since BMC software is proprietary, no other vendor can provide the required software maintenance and technical support. Licensing for BMC software, however, can be procured from BMC or its approved resellers. In order to continue to correct bugs or remediate security vulnerabilities in the software, access to the source code is required. No other vendor, other than the software developer, has access to this source code. Other software developers that offer similar products merely provide software maintenance and technical support for their own proprietary software products.

In November 2024, additional market research was conducted utilizing the General Services Administration Market Research as a Service tool. The tool did not provide any responses to the market research request. In February 2025, market research was conducted by utilizing the NASA SEWP V GWAC Provider Lookup Tool. The Provider Lookup Tool yielded multiple contract holders that are resellers of brand name BMC products. Of these contract holders, several were eligible and certified Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) concerns. Furthermore, the NASA SEWP V GWAC has a dynamic catalog where line items can be added based on customer requests; therefore, if the required item or service is within scope of the NASA SEWP V GWAC, items and services can be added to the catalog daily. At least two of these contract holders on the NASA SEWP V GWAC are SDVOSBs, and as such VA intends to issue a Request for Quote as an SDVOSB set-aside to all SDVOSB NASA SEWP V GWAC contract holders under Groups B, C, and D.

9. Other Facts: N/A

10. Technical/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.

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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 NASA SEWP V GWAC prices having previously been determined fair and reasonable. Additionally, price competition is expected among authorized resellers for this action. Price analysis will be performed in accordance with FAR 15.404-1(b).

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

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03.26.2025

Approval

In my role as procuring activity Advocate for Competition, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the acquisition of BMC AMI DevX Code Pipeline software subscription licenses, software maintenance, training, migration, and 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.

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