F5 Maintenance JA - Redacted.pdf

F5 Maintenance Renewal Control Number: VA-21-00062940

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, New Jersey 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 the renewal of brand name F5 annual maintenance support.

3. Description of Supplies or Services: VA, Office of Information & Technology, Information Technology Operations and Services, Solution Delivery, has a requirement to renew and co-term annual maintenance support for existing F5 Load Balance appliances. The maintenance support is required to allow VA to continue to leverage its F5 load balancer investment which currently provides load balancing and expansion capabilities for multiple, critical VA systems, environments and applications including Trusted Internet Connection (TIC) Gateways, Solution Delivery (SD) Lab, Personal Identity Verification (PIV) and Enterprise Video Teleconferencing Network (EVTN). F5 products without maintenance support cannot receive new software patches and essential vulnerability updates which poses significant operational and security risks to these enterprise systems. The maintenance support shall consist of 24/7 telephone and email support, hardware updates, patches and defect support, including maintenance coverage to repair or replace system equipment components that restore full operation and accessibility within 48 hours. This action is for the procurement of maintenance support only. No additional hardware or software will be procured as a result of this action. The period of performance shall include a 12-month base period from August 15, 201 to August 14, 2022 with optional line items to renew and co-term maintenance support on additional appliances for which the existing maintenance support is expiring at various dates throughout fiscal year 2022. One 12-month option period will also be included to renew maintenance on all appliances from August 15, 2022 to August 14, 2023.

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 the market research as described in section eight of this justification, it was determined that competition is available among resellers of the required brand name F5 maintenance support on the NASA SEWP V GWAC. VA requires maintenance support on its existing F5 load balancer appliances, and only F5 can provide the necessary hardware firmware updates, patches and defect support because of the proprietary nature of the appliances. No other source is capable of providing the

F5 Maintenance Renewal Control Number: VA-21-00062940 required maintenance support as only F5 has access to the proprietary source code required to troubleshoot and diagnose the load balancers and ensure the services provided to the hardware and software components of the appliances are properly configured. Failure to renew this maintenance will pose significant operational and security risks to multiple VA enterprise systems as discussed in Section 3.

Furthermore, replacing the existing F5 load balancer appliances would require in an extensive and complex redesign, development and integration effort to deploy a new load balancer solution to support these critical enterprise systems. The costs associated with replacing the existing load balancer solution is estimated to be in excess of $3.8M which is based on previous acquisition history and would not be recovered through competition. Therefore, only brand name F5 maintenance support can meet VA’s requirements for this effort.

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 market research has revealed that competition is available among resellers of the required F5 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 Contracting Opportunities Page at beta.sam.gov 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: The Government’s technical experts conducted market research in April 2021 via internet research and reviewing industry publications for maintenance and support services offered by other load balancer manufacturers including Citrix, Imperva, Fortinet, A10 Networks, Barracuda. Based on the reviews, the Government’s technical experts determined that due to the proprietary nature of the existing F5 load balancers, only F5 can access the proprietary source code which is required to properly maintain the existing hardware and software components of the appliances. Based on this market research, the VA technical experts confirmed that only F5 brand name maintenance support can meet all of VA’s requirements.

Further market research was conducted by the Contract Specialist in June 2021 by utilizing the Provider Look Up Tool on the NASA SEWP V GWAC website and the Vendor Information Pages (VIP) database. The search revealed that there are multiple VIP verified SDVOSB contract holders on NASA SEWP that are resellers of F5 products and services. As such, adequate competition is expected.

9. Other Facts: None