BNJ-Oracle OCI_COCO Reviewed -FINAL_Redacted.pdf

Department of Transportation

Federal Highway Administration IT Acquisition Center of Excellence

BRAND NAME JUSTIFICATION

The Department of Transportation (DOT) makes this Brand Name Justification pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 16.507-7.

a. Identification of Agency and Contracting Activity:

Program Office:

DOT, Office of the Secretary (OST) Office of the Chief Digital & Information Officer (OCDIO) 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE Washington, D.C. 20590

Contracting Activity:

Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) IT Acquisition Center of Excellence (ACE) 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE Washington, D.C. 20590

b. Nature and/or Description of Action Being Approved:

This requirement will be issued as firm-fixed price (FFP) task order under the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Strategic Sourcing for the Acquisition of Various Equipment and Supplies (SAVES) Program Contract to support the DOT’s Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) brand name cloud services, support, and maintenance for National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Transport Reporting and Information Processing Research System (TRIPRS) and Problem Driver Pointer System (PDPS) platforms. Supporting complex research data and reporting metrics, OCI is a comprehensive platform of public cloud services that enables DOT to build and operate two services in a highly available, hosted environment. This brand-name justification applies to the entire procurement to include cloud credits, technical support, and platform maintenance. A solicitation for a single award will be competed under the multiple award FAA SAVES Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) Contract.

c. Description of Supplies or Services Required to Meet the Agency’s Needs:

The OCI solution provides a high-performance computing environment with native security, integrated data management, and autonomous services. OCI’s architecture allows for a single point of truth for enterprise data through its Autonomous Database and Exadata cloud services, ensuring automated security patching, referential integrity, and FedRAMP high compliance.

The OCI Application Programming Interface (API) and Command Line Interface (CLI) simplify cloud resource orchestration, enabling DOT applications to scale dynamically.

OCI’s native Identity and Access Management (IAM) and Security Zones allow DOT to enforce security policies and prevent misconfigurations automatically. OCI enables direct integration with DOT’s Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) via the OCI Logging Service and Streaming Service, significantly decreasing the time to remediate cloud based security breaches.

Furthermore, OCI provides unique Fault Domains and Availability Domains for high availability and disaster recovery without requiring physical rack space in DOT facilities.

This allows for seamless migration of legacy on-premises Oracle workloads to the cloud without re-architecting the underlying database structures.

The anticipated period of performance of the task order is one year from date of award, plus four 12-month option periods. The anticipated value over the course of the maximum five-year period of performance is estimated to be .

d. Identification of the Exception to Fair Opportunity and The Supporting Rationale:

This justification is prepared in accordance with the brand name justification per FAR 16.507-7 and the format prescribed in FAR 16.507-6(d)-(e). The OCI platform is essential to the Government’s requirements and market research indicates other companies’ products do not meet, and cannot be modified to meet, the agency’s needs. The OCI platform is the only product that has all the essential features to meet the Government’s requirements, including:

1) Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers Autonomous Database and Real Application Clusters (RAC) in the cloud, which are essential for maintaining DOT’s existing mission-critical Oracle database workloads without performance degradation. This requirement is driven by the underlying architecture of the original application.

Because the system was natively engineered by Oracle standards, OCI is the only platform that provides the necessary native compatibility to maintain mission-critical operations without a costly and high-risk re-platforming effort.

2) Compatibility with Network Assessment Resource Management (NARM): OCI is fully compatible with DOT’s NARM system to monitor cloud-to-on-premise latency.

3) FedRAMP High/ Joint Authorization Board (JAB): OCI provides specific Government Cloud regions that meet strict Federal security mandates already integrated into the DOT Enterprise Infrastructure Solution (EIS).

4) Off-Box Network Virtualization: OCI’s unique architecture moves network and Input/Output (IO) virtualization out of the server stack and into the network, reducing the attack surface and increasing performance.

5) Vendor-Specific Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs): Oracle provides specific STIGs for its cloud infrastructure and database kernels, enhancing the DOT’s security posture.

6) Automated Governance: Native "Always Free" and "Security Zone" tiers to prevent accidental exposure of sensitive DOT data.

7) Self-driven, equivalent platform: Automating tasks such as scheduling maintenance and patching, which removes mundane, error-prone manual tasks so that the agency can focus on outcome-driven initiatives rather than spending staff and contract resources performing the minimum amount of work necessary.

Market Research Comparison: A market research review of comparable products was conducted in February 2026, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and

Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Market research revealed that comparable products do not meet the Government’s needs:

1) AWS lacks several features that are required to meet the Government’s needs.

a. AWS lacks the capability to provide RAC support for an Oracle-engineered product. Utilizing AWS would require DOT to procure a third-party add-on, demanding significant extra resources and failing to meet the agency’s requirement for a native solution to sustain mission-critical operations.

b. AWS requires maintenance windows to be scheduled and patched manually.

This manual function, versus automatic scheduling, creates greater risks for human error and security vulnerabilities and does not meet the agency’s needs.

2) Google Cloud Platform (GCP) lacks the same depth of vendor-specific STIGs for Oracle-based legacy workloads currently utilized within the DOT Common Operating Environment (COE).

3) The Azure platform lacks the capability of top-tier performance and automation features, which would likely lead to increased operational complexity and fragmented infrastructure, particularly for large, mission-critical workloads that require centralized management.

Per the above findings, it was determined that OCI is the only product that can meet the Government needs, given the necessary components and the platform at hand. Changing from Oracle to another cloud provider would require a complete re-platforming of DOT’s database architecture, costing millions in migration fees, personnel retraining, and security re-certification Authority to Operate (ATO) processes.

Moreover, DOT requires that the contractor be an Oracle Authorized Government reseller to ensure releases and changes to product(s) are immediately available to DOT as well as the related technical support required by the DOT user population.

e. Determination by the Contracting Officer that the Anticipated Cost to the Government will be Fair and Reasonable:

A fair and reasonable pricing determination was conducted by the FAA Contracting Officer at the IDIQ Contract level. All FAA SAVES IDIQ Contracts are awarded based on competition. Therefore, any Oracle licenses and cloud services support listed on FAA SAVES Contracts have already been determined to be fair and reasonable. Additionally, the IT ACE Contracting Officer will conduct an independent price analysis to determine price reasonableness prior to awarding this task order.

f. Any Other Facts Supporting the Justification:

N/A.

g. A Statement of the Actions, if any, the Agency may Take to Remove or Overcome any Barriers that led to the Exception to Fair Opportunity before any Subsequent Acquisition for the Supplies or Services is Made:

As information technology changes, the OCDIO will continue to monitor the cloud market

(including AWS, Azure, and GCP) for emerging capabilities that satisfy the Department’s requirements. Moreover, this requirement will be solicited on a competitive basis from the multiple award FAA SAVES Contract for IT Software Support.

h. Contracting Officer’s Certification:

The Contracting Officer’s signature on the Approvals Signature Page constitutes a certification that the justification is accurate and complete to the best of the Contracting Officer’s knowledge and belief.

i. Evidence that any supporting data that is the responsibility of technical or requirements personnel (e.g., verifying the Government’s minimum needs or requirements or other rationale for an exception to fair opportunity) and which form a basis for the justification have been certified as complete and accurate by the technical or requirements personnel:

The technical personnel’s signature on the Approvals Signature Page constitutes a certification that this justification is complete and accurate to the best of the technical personnel’s knowledge and belief.