IR174 - QoS Software Renewal JA 16.5 Redacted_Redacted.pdf

Control Number VA-20-00089599

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, NJ 07724

2. Description of Action: This proposed action is for the award of a firm-fixed-price delivery order (DO) issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government-wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for renewal of brand name LiveAction LiveNX Quality of Service (QoS) Configuration management software maintenance and support for existing brand name LiveAction LiveNX QoS perpetual software licenses.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA, Office of Electronic Health Record Modernization (OEHRM) has a requirement for renewal of brand name LiveAction LiveNX QoS software maintenance and support to enable VA to continue prioritization of EHRM network traffic to guarantee performance in times of network congestion in support of the Cerner EHRM deployment for VA as required to maintain, monitor and assess quality of service across the VA Enterprise WAN. Currently, the QoS infrastructure in place consists of brand name LiveAction LiveNX appliances, LiveWire appliances and associated optics, perpetually owned software licenses and internal parts. Continuation of software maintenance and support will allow for optimization of the existing infrastructure and to ensure timely inpatient and outpatient medical care services, mental health benefits, disability benefits, education benefits, housing benefits, and memorial services to over nine million Veterans. The required software maintenance and support provides required software upgrades, as well as, technical support that may be required to operate and/or maintain the physical devices deployed throughout the VA network. The period of performance of this action is 12 months beginning on 27 September 2020, with two 12-month option periods. The proposed action is for software maintenance and support only. No software or hardware will be procured as a result of this action. The total estimated value of this proposed action is

(inclusive of option periods).

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 the 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: The LiveAction LiveNX system provides full modular QoS configuration support for Weighted Random Early Detection (WRED), Class-Based Weighted Fair Queueing (CBWFQ), and priority queue implementations each of which are a part of the VA Enterprise QoS standard. The functions supported by LiveAction LiveNX, are hierarchical policy creation, custom Next

LiveAction LiveNX Control Number VA-20-00089599

Generation Network based Application Recognition (NBAR2) based matches including high-level attributes, configuration audit trails, built-in rules for QoS settings that highlight violations, system-wide QoS audit and immediately correcting/enforcing configuration policies. LiveAction LiveNX uniquely provides the ability to visualize end-to-end QoS marking completely from every intermediate node on the network path, cover all of VA’s approximate 22,600 network nodes and deliver a single pane of glass view of VA’s entire QoS network infrastructure.

VA requires the renewal of brand name LiveAction LiveNX QoS software maintenance and support in order to provide continuing support to the VA Enterprise QoS infrastructure. No other brand name software can function with the existing environment of LiveAction software. Existing infrastructure is based on existing LiveAction software and only LiveAction, or its authorized resellers, can provide LiveAction software maintenance and support. LiveAction’s software coding is proprietary in nature and is not released to any other party. Any source must have access to this code to ensure the services provided are properly configured and the updates are properly developed and pushed to the software. No other software provider has the capability to develop and issue software updates, patches and fixes for LiveAction software necessary to support existing requirements without access to LiveAction proprietary software code. Due to the nature of the intellectual property and software codes to perform the needed support services, proprietary copyrighted by LiveAction, no other software brand products would offer the same capability. The proprietary source code and proprietary data formats are necessary in order for the existing infrastructure and configuration to run properly.

Furthermore, LiveAction software maintenance will ensure that all support services are performed and properly configured to the VA-owned LiveAction software which can only be provided by those who have access to the proprietary software code. Additionally, no other software products could meet VA’s interoperability and compatibility requirements and would require a complete replacement of the current LiveAction infrastructure which is estimated to cost approximately

. . Finally, without procurement of the required brand name LiveAction LiveNX QoS Configuration management software maintenance and support, VA would lose the fidelity and visibility into the VA Enterprise QoS system which will negatively impact the VA’s ability to provide effective modern Telehealth, Voice calls and Patient Health Record access.

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 LiveAction services. 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 Federal Business 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: VA technical experts conducted market research in August 2020, which consisted of a review of similar services, including those from Broadcom, Colasoft, and AppNeta. While maintenance and support services from alternative software manufacturers exist, they do not meet VA’s requirements as outlined in Section 5 of this Justification because only LiveAction, or an authorized reseller, has access to the proprietary LiveAction source code that can ensure the services provided are properly configured and the updates are properly developed and pushed to the software. No other software provider has the capability to develop and issue software updates, patches and fixes for LiveAction software necessary to support existing requirements without access to LiveAction proprietary software code. Due to the nature of the intellectual property and software codes to perform the needed support services, proprietary copyrighted by LiveAction, no other software brand products would offer the same capability. Market research revealed that brand name LiveAction software maintenance and support is the only brand support that can meet VA’s requirements.

In addition, the contract specialist (CS) conducted market research in August 2020 by using the NASA SEWP V GWAC Provider Lookup Tool to determine what vendors are capable of providing the full requirement. Based on this market research, the CS identified multiple authorized service-disabled Veteran-owned small business resellers within NASA SEWP able to provide the required brand name services.

9. Other Facts: None.

10. Technical and 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.

Date: ________________________________

Signature: ____________________________

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

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

Approval

In my role as procuring activity Advocate for Competition, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the acquisition for renewal of brand name LiveAction LiveNX QoS Configuration management software maintenance and support for existing brand name LiveAction LiveNX QoS perpetual software licenses, on an other than full and open competition basis pursuant to the statutory authority cited in Section 4 above, subject to availability of funds, and provided that the services herein described have otherwise been authorized for acquisition.

Date: ____________ Signature: _________________________________