JA Gigamon Packet Brokers Final_Redacted.pdf

Gigamon Packet Brokers Control Number: VA-20-00089170

JUSTIFICATION

FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics

Technology Acquisition Center 1701 Directors Blvd

Austin, TX 78744

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 Gigamon packet brokers with associated technical support.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA, Office of Electronic Health Record Modernization (OEHRM) provides program management and oversight of the implementation of the VA’s new Electronic Health Record (EHR). In preparation for the transition from the legacy Veterans Information Technology and System Architecture (VistA) system to the new EHR, network infrastructure at the VA medical centers are being enhanced to securely connect to and provide high performance access to the Cerner data center where the Electronic Health Record (EHR) solution is hosted. These enhancements require the extension of existing management and monitoring platforms providing security, network performance and application performance management. All supporting infrastructure must be in place by November 2020 to support the integration of and the transition to the EHR at 12 VA Medical Centers (VAMCs) and associated supporting locations in Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) 10.

The proposed action is to provide 12 brand name Gigamon packet brokers with elite technical support (24x7/365) to increase the current capacity to collect network traffic and distribute traffic data to existing network monitoring and traffic analysis systems to support service assurance and cybersecurity. The elite technical support includes defect isolation plus assistance with more complex configuration and “how to” questions, full access to latest software releases for duration of the standard support agreement, technical support by phone, email, and web (24x7x365), and same day advanced hardware replacement. Delivery shall be made within 30 days and includes 12 months of technical support. The order will also include optional line items for increased quantity of brand name Gigamon packet brokers that may be required as additional VAMCs prepare to go live. The total estimated value of the proposed action is

, inclusive of optional quantities.

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 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 market research, as described in section 8 of this justification, it was determined that limited competition among resellers is available for the required brand name Gigamon packet brokers with associated technical support.

VA has Gigamon packet brokers deployed in more than 230 VAMCs and other VA facilities across the enterprise. Packet brokers were originally deployed as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program to establish a comprehensive security and monitoring framework within the government. Since that time, VA has integrated other network management functions including network and application performance management. Through this infrastructure the VA is able to efficiently collect information about network traffic, correlate that with other events in other locations to rapidly identify security and performance issues affecting Veteran care and VA operations in general. This infrastructure is part of the VA’s Joint Security Architecture that is used to connect VAMCs to the new EHR.

The packet brokers are network appliances which listen to and inspect network traffic.

The packet brokers are able to classify the traffic by source and destination and the application being supported. They are further able to understand details about the application transactions. After identifying “interesting” traffic – called flows - the information is packaged into messages that are transmitted to one or more of the management platforms through high-speed, high-bandwidth direct connections.

“Interesting” traffic is determined by rules programmed into the packet brokers by VA staff using Gigamon’s centralized management software called Fabric Manager.

The Fabric Manager meets the VA requirement for a single interface that allows VA staff to effectively and efficiently manage all packet brokers deployed in this solution. The communication between the Fabric Manager and the Gigamon packet brokers is proprietary to Gigamon. In addition to standard protocols such as TCP/SSL, Syslog, and SNMP, Gigamon uses the proprietary GigaVUE H series communication to transport messages that rely on proprietary knowledge of Gigamon configuration language and system software. Using this proprietary software, Fabric Manager provides functions required and critical to the VA’s ability to manage the enhanced infrastructure across all VAMCs. This includes: the ability to manage packet broker access credentials; enable feature licenses on packet brokers; track firmware versions, initiate and report status of firmware upgrades; create and store template configurations representing standard deployments models; write flow policies and validate them to ensure they do not overlap; use template configurations and policies to program specific packet brokers ensuring that all packet brokers detect and report flows to correct monitoring platforms;

and allow VA staff to visually verify that deployed configurations are working correctly.

Gigamon Fabric Manager is not capable of the same functionality with any other brand packet broker and no other central management software is capable of the same functionality with Gigamon packet brokers due to the proprietary software. Gigamon has also stated they will not provide support for using Fabric Manager with another vendor’s packet broker. Thus, procurement of any other brand packet broker would also require procurement of the new vendor’s management software thus not meeting the VA requirement for a single management interface. Additionally, procurement of any other brand packet broker would leave VA with no mechanism to verify that the rules defined in both platforms are equivalent or a way to verify that each platform would produce equivalent results. Without consistent configuration, the VA would get inconsistent reports and not be able to correlate issues causing delays in identifying and responding to service and cybersecurity impacting events that would hamper VA access to patient records required for patient care.

As described above the current packet broker infrastructure physically connects to the security, application and network performance management applications. Procurement of another brand packet broker would require redesign and engineering of the monitoring environment to support the new connections to the management platforms.

This redesign would delay the deployment of the EHR planned for VISN10.

Failure to acquire Gigamon components would leave the VA without an enterprise packet broker infrastructure managed with a single interface necessary for EHRM operations. Procurement of any other vendors brand packet broker would require a complete replacement of the existing Gigamon packet broker infrastructure to achieve the single management interface with required functionality already in place which would result in substantial delays to EHRM deployment and duplication of costs.

Specifically, based on previous procurement history, it is estimated that a replacement of the existing Gigamon infrastructure would cost approximately and take approximately 5 years to complete. These duplicated costs would not be recovered 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, the undersigned VA technical representative determined that limited competition is available among resellers. 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. Specifically, the government will research similar items to determine if any changes have been identified in the marketplace.

8. Market Research: The technical experts reviewed alternate products to Gigamon in August 2020, which consisted of Ixia and NetScout. While other networking hardware solutions from alternative manufacturers exist, they do not meet VA’s requirements as outlined in Section 5 of this Justification because no other OEM can meet the VA’s requirement for a single central management system that allows the VA to manage both Gigamon and another vendor’s packet brokers, as only Gigamon or a reseller has access to the proprietary communication protocol that Gigamon central management software (Fabric Manager) uses to manage the Gigamon packet brokers currently in place across the VA. In addition, VA technical experts regularly review industry trade publications and conduct internet research to ascertain if any other brand name equipment is available.

In addition, on August 24, 2020, VA was contacted via email by who expressed concerns/questions with a market research request posted to

SEWP for Gigamon packet brokers. stated that it could provide packet brokers which could meet VA needs. VA’s technical experts reviewed product offerings and advised the Contracting Officer (CO) that products did not meet VA’s requirements. As a result, on September 9,2020, the CO informed that VA intended to issue an RFQ on a brand name basis and provided additional information on the requirement. provided a response on September 10, with additional information claiming that the product is a viable solution. The Government technical experts again reviewed claims and again determined that only Gigamon packet brokers will meet VA’s requirements based on the rationale provided in Section 5 of this document. Specifically, responses to the Government do not address the VA requirement for a single interface that allows VA staff to effectively and efficiently manage all packet brokers deployed in this solution through use of packet brokers and not Gigamon packet brokers. This does not meet VA’s requirements. Additionally, market research revealed that brand name Gigamon packet brokers are the only brand packet brokers that can be added to VA’s infrastructure without requiring a complete replacement of the existing packet broker infrastructure.

The Contract Specialist (CS) conducted market research in September 2020 by using the NASA SEWP V GWAC market research tools to determine what vendors can meet the requirement. Based on this market research, the CS found multiple resellers capable of meeting the full requirement.

9. Other Facts:

None.