JA - JSA Riverbed Redacted.pdf

VA-20-00088620

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 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 Riverbed Application Response11 (AR11) Traffic Monitoring Appliances (formerly known as NetShark), software licenses, and associated maintenance and support.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Electronic Health Record Modernization (OEHRM) provides program

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. The supporting infrastructure must be in place to enable the transition and support the connectivity for twelve (12) VA Medical Centers (VAMCs), in Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) 10 to the jointly-managed EHR in the Cerner data center.

The proposed action will provide 12 brand name Riverbed AR11 Traffic Monitoring Appliances, 12 software licenses, and associated maintenance and support to collect network traffic and distribute traffic data to existing network monitoring and traffic analysis systems to support service assurance and cybersecurity. This deployment extends previous deployments made as part of the preparation for the new EHR. The Riverbed AR11 traffic monitoring appliances monitor the EHRM network traffic and report application metrics necessary for performance monitoring, issue diagnosis and resolution. The software licenses allow access to upgrades, maintenance releases, and software updates to ensure aintenance services provide both time sensitive delivery of hardware replacements and access to software application updates while the support services include 24/7 access to technical support staff for both hardware and software information, issue resolution, and escalation.

The period of performance shall include a 12-month base period which includes an optional task for an additional 39 AR11 Traffic Monitoring Appliances and associated software licenses which would facilitate expansion of this connection to the Cerner data center to other VISNs. The total estimated value of the proposed action is

, inclusive of the optional task.

JSA Monitoring- Riverbed Traffic Monitoring Appliances VA-20-00088620

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 providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the

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 viable among authorized resellers for the required brand name Riverbed products. VA requires expansion of the existing 34 VA owned Riverbed AR11 appliances to ensure compatibility and interoperability with the existing Riverbed equipment and EHRM requirements. Current network-based application monitoring in place throughout the VA utilizes Riverbed brand products. Riverbed brand products are therefore essential to

Specifically, the existing network-based application performance monitoring solution for the VA Enterprise is the Riverbed SteelCentral NetProfiler, which provides VA network engineers a view of the entire VA network required to isolate application performance issues using the metrics and packet captures reported by the Riverbed AR11 appliance.

The integration between the existing Riverbed SteelCentral NetProfiler and the Riverbed AR11 is proprietary in nature. Only Riverbed AR11 appliances can interoperate with the Riverbed SteelCentral NetProfiler.Riverbed uses proprietary messages to transmit data between the AR11s and the NetProfiler. Riverbed owns the proprietary rights to Riverbed appliance software and NetProfiler and only Riverbed has the required access to the source code and other proprietary data of the software to support the required effort. Additionally, no other provider would be able to support the Riverbed AR11 appliances or provide the required appliance maintenance support without access to the source code and other proprietary data of the software. Without this proprietary source code, a non-Riverbed maintenance provider would not have access to proprietary Riverbed code which is necessary to process proprietary messages and push patches and updates for all deployed software and firmware running on the appliances required to ensure the Riverbed infrastructure is properly configured and operational. Therefore, brand name Riverbed maintenance and support are the only services

Use of any other vendors hardware, software, and support would require a total replacement of the application performance monitoring infrastructure which would result in extensive delivery delays and duplicated costs. Specifically, replacement of the existing Riverbed network-based application performance monitoring infrastructure would cost an estimated $20.6 million and take at least 12 months to complete. These estimates are based on previous acquisition history. These estimated duplicative costs would not be recovered through competition.

Failure to acquire the required Riverbed hardware, software, maintenance and support would leave the VA EHRM without the required levels of application data collection, monitoring, and analysis in support of service assurance and cyber security. This failure would leave the VA without the necessary equipment required to protect Veteran,

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 Riverbed hardware, software, maintenance and support. 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 beta.SAM.gov 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 market place that would enable future actions to be competed. Specifically, the Government will continue to monitor the marketplace to determine whether other manufacturers can be integrated into the Joint VA/DoD security monitoring system

8. Market Research: The technical experts reviewed alternate products in August 2020 from OEM providers NetScout nGeniusONE . While other networking hardware and software solutions from alternative manufacturers exist, they only Riverbed, or an authorized reseller, has access to the current hardware and software that communicates through a source code based on Riverbed proprietary data 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. Market research revealed that Riverbed hardware and infrastructure without requiring a complete replacement of the existing application performance monitoring infrastructure as detailed in Section 5.

Further market research was conducted on August 3, 2020 through issuance of a Request for Information (RFI) via the NASA SEWP V website to ascertain if there

Riverbed AR11 hardware, software, and maintenance and support services. The RFI closed on August 6, 2020, with two (2) responses received from Minburn Technology Group, LLC and Veteran Technology Partners, LLC , both of which are Group B, Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Businesses (SDVOSBs).

Additional market research was conducted in August 2020 by using the NASA SEWP V GWAC Provider Lookup Tool to determine which identified a total of eighty-one (81) resellers of brand name Riverbed products. Of those resellers, twenty (20) are SDVOSB resellers (three of which are approved/authorized resellers).

Based on the market res determined that only brand name Riverbed Traffic Monitoring Appliances with associated software, maintenance and support

9. Other Facts: None.