Google Cloud Platform-J and A-Redacted.pdf

BRAND NAME JUSTIFICATION

SECTION 1: IDENTIFICATION OF THE AGENCY AND THE CONTRACTING ACTIVITY

Department of State Contracting Activity ☒ Office of Acquisitions Management

Requiring Activity Bureau of Diplomatic Technology, Business Management & Planning, Office of IT Acquisitions (DT/BMP/ITA)

SECTION 2: NATURE AND/OR DESCRIPTION OF THE ACTION BEING APPROVED

Approval is requested to limit the number of sources for soliciting and awarding an enterprise Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) for Google Cloud Platform (GCP) products and maintenance support under a Federal Supply Schedule contract for the supplies and/or services described in Section 3 on behalf of the Requiring Activity for a base year and up to four option years.

This requirement will be awarded on a firm fixed unit price (FFUP) basis under the General Services Administration (GSA) Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Government-wide acquisition contract (GWAC).

SECTION 3: DESCRIPTION OF SUPPLIES OR SERVICES REQUIRED TO MEET THE AGENCY’S

NEEDS

The Department of State (State) uses GCP as a unified cloud management platform supporting numerous core business functions including artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML), data warehouses, virtual machines, and serverless compute. GCP is State’s enterprise-wide solution for text-to-speech/speech-to-text and automation applications. The GCP solution supports numerous mission-critical operations and business processes across bureaus, offices, and posts including, but not limited to, the Bureau of Diplomatic Technology (DT), Bureau of Consular Affairs (CA), Foreign Service institute (FSI), and Embassy, San Jose.

State customers manage critical State systems, applications, and workflows that rely on access to the full suite of GCP products and maintenance support to sustain operations. Additionally, State requires continued access to the full catalog of GCP offerings to support ongoing implementation, modernization, and capability enhancement to enable State to adapt to the dynamic and constantly evolving nature of its public diplomacy mission.

To support State’s ability to maximize the value of their unified cloud management platform including AI/ML, data warehouses, virtual machines, and serverless compute, State requires access to maintenance and supporting services from GCP certified experts to optimize aspects of the design and implementation of the myriad GCP products to maximize performance. State offices and bureaus require access to a streamlined acquisition vehicle for continued access to GCP’s full catalog of products and supporting services. Establishing a BPA for the full suite of GCP’s offerings will provide State offices and bureaus the ability to issue Call Orders to maintain mission specific cloud solutions and access to critical application support services that can enable customers to quickly and flexibly adapt to evolving requirements driven by global events through streamlined access to capable experts, who have deep reach-back directly to the publisher, GCP.

SECTION 4: AUTHORITY AND SUPPORTING RATIONALE

This acquisition is conducted under the authority of the Multiple-Award Schedule Program (41 U.S.C. 152(3) and 40 U.S.C. 501), as implemented in FAR 8.405-6 by the following:

☒ FAR 8.405-6(b)- Items peculiar to one manufacturer

State’s existing cloud-based solutions and business processes rely on access to the full GCP product suite, maintenance, and supporting services provided by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM), GCP. This acquisition is critical to ensure State offices and bureaus can maintain continuity of operations for critical systems relying on GCP’s commercial off the shelf (COTS) solution and access to market-leading unified cloud management platform that provides AI/ML, data warehouses, virtual machines, and serverless compute to support future needs and react quickly and flexibly to dynamic changes in State’s national security and diplomacy missions.

Market research was conducted, and State issued a Request for Information (RFI) in January 2025 to assess industry capabilities in providing proven COTS offering for a unified cloud management platform that provides AI/ML, data warehouses, virtual machines, and serverless compute. A total of 15 vendors submitted recommendations of potential COTS platforms that could meet all the core operational, mandatory technical, performance requirements described in State’s RFI (#19AQMM25B0100). A technical team from DT evaluated the responses. Six (6) vendor submissions recommended unspecified or unnamed solutions that could not be confirmed as COTS solutions or did not submit a singular COTS solution that could address all of the requirements detailed in State’s RFI. As such, the submissions were determined nonresponsive and did not receive further review. Of the remaining nine (9) vendor submissions, four (4) vendors did not fully detail or describe a COTS solution recommendation that could meet State’s operational and core technical requirements, including the ability to provide a commercially proven platform that can deliver all the mandatory requirements as listed under Section 2.1 of the RFI. As a result, these four (4) vendors recommended solutions were determined to be incompatible with the mandatory requirements and were not given further consideration.

The five (5) remaining vendor submissions recommended GCP as a single, vertically integrated platform solution that was capable of meeting all of State’s mandatory operational, security, key technical, and functional requirements for a cloud management platform. Based on the results obtained through the RFI/Sources Sought, the Government determined that Google/GCP is the only supplier capable of offering a singular COTS solution that can fully meet State’s requirements in the areas of text-to-speech, Speech-to-text, translation AI/ML, virtual machines, automation, and serverless compute, as well as provide functionality within a single, vertically integrated platform. Alternative original equipment manufacturer (OEM) solutions did not demonstrate the functionality, breadth of application offerings, centralized catalog of product offerings, and technical capabilities State requires for its mission specific implementations.

Additional unique capabilities and features that address on State’s highly specialized cloud platform requirements are GCP’s virtual machine (VM) service, Compute Engine, advance auto-scaling, user created custom metrics for auto-scaling, seamless integration with Kubernetes, and global load balancing integration.

• GCP’s Compute Engine offers advanced auto-scaling capabilities that allows applications to automatically adjust resources based on demand. This ensures optimal performance and through the predictive autoscaling, GCP creates VMs ahead of anticipated demand. This allows time for applications to initialize before workload arrives, which reduces latency and ensures a smoother user experience, especially for applications that may have long initialization times.

• GCP's auto-scaling capabilities are tightly integrated with Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). This allows for efficient scaling of containerized applications, leveraging Kubernetes' native auto-scaling features along with GCP's advanced capabilities.

• GCP's auto-scaling works in conjunction with its global load balancing services. This ensures that traffic is distributed efficiently across multiple regions and zones, providing high availability and reliability for applications. GCP’s global load balancers offer features such as single global load balancing IP address, optimized traffic management, and seamless multi-region failover, which is advantageous for a globally dispersed organization like State that needs a virtual private cloud (VPC) that can simplify setting up multi-region architectures instead of limiting an organization to single regional-based VPCs.

• GCP’s solution allows users to create and use custom metrics for auto-scaling. This provides more flexibility and control over how resources are scaled based on specific application needs and performance indicators.

Furthermore, GCP’s text-to-speech ability to offers over 220 voices in 40 languages that are powered by natural-sounding voices through GCP’s learning models. States access to this unique feature allows for bureaus to meet their mission by providing efficient and effective learning modules and customer service.

State requires precision when transcribing audio; GCP’s speech-to-text (STT) transcribes audio in real-time with over 90% accuracy. GCP’s STT supports over 120 languages to streamline customer service and communications resulting in less time spent making administrative corrections. Additionally, GCP integrates data analytics, compute power, and serverless solutions that creates an ecosystem that enables flexibility for growing needs of State. GCP’s automation and data analytics provides real-time insights that is integrated with their security infrastructure to safeguard State while streamlining IT processes.

The GCP solution integrates these core capabilities into a unified and consistent user experience on a unified, single, vertically integrated platform, which meets State’s requirements and is essential for State’s primary use cases highlighted in Section 3 above. Given the importance of State’s global missions, the need across State to access a market-leading unified cloud management platform that delivers on State’s mandatory and core technical requirements to include integrating AI/ML, virtual machines, serverless compute, and data warehouses, as well as provide global load balancing that can be distributed across multiple regions at once along with advanced auto-scaling capabilities. Such offerings are proprietary to and offered by the OEM, GCP.

These highly specialized capabilities are essential to maintain State offices and bureaus’ ability to effectively address their globally dispersed mission objectives.

SECTION 5: DETERMINATION BY THE ORDERING ACTIVITY CONTRACTING OFFICER THAT THE

CONTRACT ACTION REPRESENTS THE BEST VALUE CONSISTENT WITH FAR 8.404(D)

The Contracting Officer (CO) has determined the anticipated contract action will represent the best value based on the CO’s plan to follow the procedures in FAR 8.405. Contracts awarded under GSA schedules are already deemed fair and reasonable, and the solicitation will request Offerors’ proposed prices be discounted from their GSA schedule prices. Although approval is requested to contract with one source, the CO will not award the planned contract action unless the CO evaluates and determines that the price is fair and reasonable.

SECTION 6: DESCRIPTION OF THE MARKET RESEARCH CONDUCTED AMONG SCHEDULE

HOLDERS AND THE RESULTS OR A STATEMENT OF THE REASON MARKET RESEARCH WAS

NOT CONDUCTED

As mentioned previously, State issued an RFI in January 2025 to conduct market research among GSA schedule holders to identify solutions that could address the full range of mission requirements specified by State and determined that GCP brand name products are required.

Since other best-in-class GWACs are nearing their expiration (e.g., NASA SEWP V and NITAAC CIO-CS) and recompete acquisition vehicles have not yet been awarded to replace these expiring GWACs, State determined that the GSA MAS GWAC is the best option for acquiring State’s GCP products, maintenance, and supporting services requirements. State conducted market research to determine the number of authorized resellers on GSA MAS able to meet State’s requirements to sell the full catalog of GCP products and services, as well as meet other core capability requirements. Based on State’s market research, Carahsoft and TD SYNNEX are the main distributors of GCP products and supporting services to the federal government. State conducted a review of available vendors who are authorized GCP resellers and are authorized to sell the full GCP suite of products and supporting services to the Government. The results of this market research identified that there is a number of small business vendors who are GCP resellers and are authorized to resell GCP by the distributors.

State’s market research supports establishment of a BPA against the GSA MAS program, to procure State’s GCP licensing, maintenance, and supporting services requirements. The information obtained through recent market research support competing State’s GCP cloud management requirements among all interested small businesses who are authorized GCP resellers that are authorized to sell GCP products and supporting services through the GSA MAS GWAC.

SECTION 7: STATEMENT OF THE ACTIONS, IF ANY, THE AGENCY MAY TAKE TO REMOVE OR

OVERCOME ANY BARRIERS THAT LED TO THE RESTRICTED CONSIDERATION BEFORE ANY

SUBSEQUENT ACQUISITION FOR THE SUPPLIES OR SERVICES IS MADE

In accordance with FAR 8.405-6()(2)(B)) this Justification and Approval will be posted. Any responses will be annotated and considered for use in future procurements similar to this one. In addition, State will continue to conduct market research to determine if any other alternative COTS software OEMs can provide a centralized, cloud management platform similar to and compatible with existing GCP and can fulfill State’s core cloud management technical requirements.