JA_CommVault - Final - Redacted.pdf

Control Number _______________

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: The proposed action is for a firm-fixed-price delivery order 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 CommVault software maintenance support.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA, Office of Information and Technology (OIT), Information Technology Operations and Services has a requirement to renew brand name Commvault software maintenance support for data protection and backup in support of critical sites data and the National Tapeless Backup Encryption (TBE) project for over 8,000 terabytes (TB) of data capacity software licenses. CommVault software is installed and operating VA-wide in all respective medical centers, Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) Data Centers, and Non-Vista Data Centers performing centralized backup operations for all VA Medical Centers (VAMC). This CommVault software maintenance support renewal is for existing software that is already established and serves the purpose of disaster recovery for all VAMCs. This renewal will ensure standardized backup, file replication, disaster preparedness and recovery time objectives of all OIT server-based data and applications in all VAMCs throughout the enterprise. The required CommVault software maintenance support shall include bug fixes, upgrade releases and enhancements, and periodic updates. This action is for renewal of maintenance support only. No hardware or software will be procured as a result of this action. The Period of Performance is June 16, 2021 through June 15, 2022.The total estimated price of the proposed action is____________.

4. Statutory Authority: Pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 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 Subpart 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 extensive market research, as described in section 8 of this document, it was determined that competition is available among resellers for the brand name CommVault software maintenance support. Commvault is currently utilized as the sole software architecture to backup and/or archive data at approximately 170 VAMCs, including over 1200 heath care facilities. The current CommVault infrastructure is only compatible with proprietary CommVault software licensing due to the proprietary elements of the existing

CommVault –Software Maintenance Support Control Number infrastructure. Specifically, the existing infrastructure only consists of CommVault software and hardware that can only communicate within that brand. Utilizing another brand name software under this action would result in interoperability and compatibility issues; specifically, any other brand name software will not communicate with the existing CommVault hardware and software.

Furthermore, use of any other brand name software would result in replacing all the existing CommVault hardware and software currently fielded that is not being renewed or replaced under this proposed action. The replacement would result in a delay of a minimum of two years to replace backups across VA. This will result in duplicated cost of approximately $10M that will not be recoverable through competition. This does not include the time and investment VA has spent to get to get this software into production.

These estimates are based on previous efforts for similar procurements. VA requires brand name CommVault software maintenance support on its existing CommVault software, and only CommVault, or a reseller, can provide the necessary bug fixes, upgrade releases and enhancements, and periodic updates because of the proprietary source code. No other software developer has the intellectual property rights to access and modify the CommVault source code, which is required in order to execute the needed bug fixes, upgrades and updates. Only CommVault or its resellers have access to CommVault’s proprietary software source code needed to provide the required software maintenance and ensure that the services provided are properly configured.

This code is also required to develop and push updates and upgrades to the existing software. If any other source was to provide these software maintenance services without the CommVault proprietary source code, it would not be able to push upgrades to the existing software to fix and configure the software. This access is critical to meet VA’s need to maintain the CommVault software as operational.

Based on market research, there is no other software license that meets VA’s requirements to maintain the Commvault infrastructure. Specifically, the CommVault Application Suite is composed of only CommVault products and operates through CommVault’s proprietary code. This proprietary constraint does not allow other brand name products to fully operate with the existing products currently fielded without severely comprising the operational integrity of the existing CommVault Application Suite. If another product was introduced, there would be interoperability and compatibility issues with the current Commvault architecture rendering the infrastructure unusable. Another product’s software license, if utilized, would not be able to communicate with the currently implemented Commvault infrastructure. Moreover, acquisition of a different brand of software license would require a completely separate non-Commvault infrastructure to support the existing application due to Commvault’s proprietary structures, protocols, software application programming interfaces, and different products. Additionally, new training for ITOPS support staff would have to be provided if a different brand of software is used. This would multiply the support costs required by ITOPS, require VA staff to be trained to learn the new application, and result in extensive delays and duplicated cost that would not be recoverable through competition.

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, it was determined that competition is viable among resellers for this brand name software. 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 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 by continually reviewing competing software products to learn if there have been any changes in the marketplace that would enable future actions to be competed.

8. Market Research: Market research was conducted by VA technical experts in February 2021 which included internet searches and reviews of published technical data for backup software and software maintenance packages available from NetBackup and Symantec Backup Exec. As a result of the market research, the technical experts confirmed that the source code required to issue the bug fixes, upgrades and updates is proprietary to CommVault. While other backup software manufacturers exist, no other manufacturers can access the CommVault source code in order to maintain and support the existing software already installed and operating VA-wide in all respective medical centers, VistA Data Centers, and Non-Vista Data Centers performing centralized backup operations for all VAMCs. In addition, the Program Manager contacted CommVault to determine whether its proprietary source code was for sale. CommVault advised on February 15, 2021 that this data is not for sale and CommVault has no plans to sell its source code. Based upon this research, the Government’s technical experts have determined that only CommVault brand name software maintenance support can meet all of VA’s requirements.

Additional market research was conducted by the Contract Specialist in May 2021 by utilizing the NASA SEWP V GWAC Provider Lookup tool to determine whether the brand name CommVault software licenses were available. It was determined that there are several resellers of CommVault software licenses and support that hold current NASA SEWP V contracts. Competition is expected.

9. Other Facts: None.