JA_36C10B20Q0347.pdf

Control Number: VA-20-00038538

JUSTIFICATION

FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Procurement, Acquisition & 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 brand name Oracle Tuxedo software and Oracle Tuxedo Jolt software licenses, maintenance and technical support.

3. Description of Supplies or Services: VA, Enterprise Program Management Office (EPMO) requires continued maintenance and technical support on existing Oracle Tuxedo software and Oracle Tuxedo Jolt software licenses that are utilized in support of the Financial Management Business Transformation (FMBT) Program.

Additionally, in Option Period One of this delivery order, VA EPMO requires an additional 66 Oracle Tuxedo and 66 Oracle Tuxedo Jolt software licenses due to an unanticipated increase in demands. VA’s current number of licenses will support VA’s needs through January 31, 2021, however, in order to adequately support iFAMS and the current wave implementation schedule, VA requires an additional 66 Oracle Tuxedo and 66 Oracle Tuxedo Jolt software licenses in Option Period One. Oracle licenses serve as the base platform (engine) upon which the Integrated Financial & Acquisition Management System (iFAMS) applications reside and performs the underlying work for the applications. iFAMS is an Enterprise Resource Planning System that is comprised of various Oracle products, such as: Database Tier, Oracle Database Enterprise Edition, Oracle Active Data Guard, Oracle Partitioning Pack, Oracle Diagnostics Pack, Oracle Tuning Pack, Oracle Advanced Security Option (ASO), Oracle Golden Gate, Application Tier, Oracle Weblogic and Oracle Tuxedo + Jolt. The iFAMS applications are tuned and configured to run on top of Oracle Tuxedo and Oracle Tuxedo Jolt and no substitutions can be made. Oracle Tuxedo is a messaging middleware software, which provides a service-oriented infrastructure for efficiently routing, dispatching, and managing requests, events, and application queues across system processes and application services within iFAMS. With virtually limitless scalability, it manages peak transaction volumes efficiently, improving business agility and letting the VA quickly react to changes in business demands and throughput.

Oracle Tuxedo optimizes transactions across multiple databases and ensures data integrity across all participating resources, regardless of access protocol. The system tracks transaction participants and supervises a two-phase commit protocol, ensuring that all transaction commits and rollbacks are properly handled.

Oracle Tuxedo Jolt also provides Java application program interface for access to Tuxedo applications from standalone clients or other Java environments. As a result, this makes Tuxedo with Jolt unique in its function as it pertains to the FMBT Program and is the only technology that can be used to fulfill the requirements of the FMBT Program architecture. The aforementioned items do not include hardware. The required maintenance and technical support shall consists of Product Support, Maintenance Support, and New Release Support, defined as program updates, fixes, security alerts and critical patch updates, tax, legal and regulatory updates, upgrade scripts, certification with most new third-party products/versions, major product and technology releases, which may include general maintenance releases, selected functionality releases and documentation updates. The technical assistance with service requests shall be 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. Access to the customer support systems specified in the Web- Based Customer Support Systems, including the ability to log service requests online, unless stated otherwise to include non-technical customer service during normal business hours. The Base Period of Performance (PoP) shall be August 1, 2020 through January 31, 2021. The PoP for Option Periods One through Three shall be 12-months each. The PoP for Option Period Four shall be February 1, 2024 through July 31, 2024. The required 66 Oracle Tuxedo and 66 Oracle Tuxedo Jolt software licenses shall be procured in Option Period One only.

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 market research as described in section 8 of this document, it was determined that limited competition is available among resellers. The existing iFAMS is provisioned on an FMBT Cloud Computing environment which relies on Oracle software licenses.

Specifically, the existing iFAMS consists of various Oracle products as outlined in Section 3 of this justification. In support of the National Cemetery Administration (NCA) wave and all future waves, iFAMS will use Oracle Tuxedo and Oracle Tuxedo Jolt in its Testing Environment, Development Environment, Pre-Production Environment, Production Environment, and Disaster Recovery Environment. Due to an unanticipated increase in demands, VA requires additional software licenses.

The increase for these additional software licenses is due to the scaling up of capacity and acceleration of implementation schedule in order to meet throughput requirements in support of the FMBT program. The FMBT program is a phased program with each phase consisting of many feeder systems that send data to iFAMS. iFAMS is designed to only run on the Oracle product stack currently consisting of the Oracle 18c Database Management System, Oracle WebLogic Server and Oracle Tuxedo and Tuxedo Jolt. The Oracle 18c Database Management System is used to store application data securely and reliably while providing scalability, high availability and disaster recovery. Oracle Tuxedo and Tuxedo Jolt are required because the iFAMS was architected around this technology. No other brand name software licenses will be able to meet the applications and VA’s interoperability and compatibility requirements. VA has an extensive amount of Oracle products currently fielded in 12 other Oracle database and middleware titles and has 30 years’ worth of deployments in thousands of different installations across the VA, which will eventually interface with iFAMS.

Specifically, no other brand name software would be able to communicate and function with the currently fielded Oracle software licenses due to proprietary constraints within the software and its integration with the iFAMS application. As a result, use of any other brand name item would require extensive diagnosis, risk assessment, and replacement of the existing Oracle software licenses and the newly implemented Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning System solution, resulting in delivery delays of three years, software duplication or replacement costs associated with selecting a non-Oracle based Enterprise Resource Planning system, and additional system integration costs of over $100 million dollars that would not be recovered through competition. This estimate is based on previous efforts for similar items and services.

Only maintenance and technical support provided by Oracle, or a reseller, can meet the requirements as the existing software is proprietary to Oracle. Specifically, without access to Oracle proprietary source code, no other source is able to provide program updates, fixes, security alerts and critical patch updates, tax, legal and regulatory updates, upgrade scripts, certification with most new third-party products/versions, major product and technology releases, which may include general maintenance releases, selected functionality releases and documentation updates. Additionally, since the software is proprietary, no third-party source exists that provides analysis, troubleshooting, and resolution of any software product-related problems other than an Oracle reseller.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Currently, no other companies other than Oracle or a reseller can provide the required software licenses, maintenance and technical support. 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. It was determined, however, that limited competition is viable among resellers for this brand name acquisition. In accordance with FAR

5.301 and 16.505(b)(2), notice of award of this action will be synopsized on the Federal Business Opportunities Page within 14 days of award and this justification will be made publicly available. This justification shall also be posted with the solicitation on the NASA SEWP V GWAC website for review by prospective offerors.

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 technical experts conducted market research in May 2020 to ascertain the ability of any other software to meet VAs needs.

Specifically, the Government’s technical experts reviewed similar software from Microsoft and IBM. Based on this analysis the Government technical experts determined that no other brand name software would be able to communicate and function with the currently fielded Oracle software licenses due to proprietary constraints within the software and its integration with the iFAMS application.

Additionally, as detailed in Section 5 of this justification, no other vendors can provide the required brand name Oracle maintenance and technical support.

The Government’s technical experts reviewed products from Microsoft and IBM to determine whether any other sources can provide maintenance and technical support. . After review, it was determined that no other vendor can provide the required brand name Oracle maintenance and technical support due to the proprietary source code, no other source is able to provide program updates, fixes, security alerts and critical patch updates, tax, legal and regulatory updates, upgrade scripts, certification with most new third-party products/versions, major product and technology releases, which may include general maintenance releases, selected functionality releases and documentation updates to the proprietary Oracle software. Each software developer offers a proprietary system and associated services that will only operate with its respective hardware and software. Based on this market research, only Oracle or resellers of Oracle can meet VA technical requirements.

Additional market research was conducted in May 2020 by utilizing the NASA SEWP Provider Lookup tool to determine whether the brand name Oracle products are available from NASA SEWP V GWAC holders. VA determined that there are several resellers of the brand name Oracle products that hold current GWACs such that limited competition is anticipated.

9. Other Facts: None.