JA_Oracle Tuxedo.pdf

Control Number: VA-22-00018632

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 software maintenance and technical support for existing brand name Oracle Tuxedo and Oracle Tuxedo Jolt software licenses for the Integrated Financial & Acquisition Management System (iFAMS) in support of VA’s Financial Management Business Transformation (FMBT) Program.

3. Description of Supplies or Services: VA, Enterprise Program Management Office (EPMO) requires continued maintenance and technical support on existing Oracle Tuxedo software licenses and Oracle Tuxedo Jolt software licenses that are utilized in support of the FMBT Program. No additional software licenses are being procured under this effort. This effort is for software maintenance and technical support only. Oracle licenses serve as the base platform (engine) upon which the 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 consist of

Oracle Tuxedo/Jolt Software Licenses Maintenance and Technical Support

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 shall be February 26, 2022 through February 25, 2023, plus one (1) 6-month option period, if exercised.

The total estimated value of the proposed action is , inclusive of the option period.

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. More specifically, the type of technical support must match software for the software of function. Therefore, only maintenance and technical support provided by Oracle, or a reseller, can meet the requirements as the existing software is proprietary to Oracle. 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.

As a result of these proprietary constraints, use of any other brand maintenance and technical support would require extensive diagnosis, risk assessment, and replacement of the existing Oracle software licenses and the 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.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has a clear and critical need to modernize its legacy core Financial Management System (FMS). The FMS is 30 years old and continued reliance on it presents enormous risk to VA operations. The technical and functional ability to support the legacy application becomes more diff icult with each passing year. New audit issues have surfaced including security related issues that cannot be fixed in the older software. In addition to non-compliance with security standards, the FMS is no longer compliant with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) circulars A-123, Appendix A, Internal Control over Financial Reporting and A-127, Financial Management Systems; and there is no way to bring it into compliance. Failure to acquire the software maintenance and technical support for existing brand name Oracle Tuxedo and Oracle Tuxedo Jolt software licenses would negatively impact iFAMS and FMBT Program.

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 for brand name Oracle licenses, as well as software maintenance. 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 Contract Opportunities Page website on SAM.gov website and this justification will be made publicly available within 14 days of award.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: VA anticipates that a long-term ULA for various Oracle products, to include Tuxedo and Tuxedo Jolt, will be awarded in August 2024. VA anticipates that all future Oracle Tuxedo and Tuxedo Jolt licenses will be satisfied through that ULA. However, 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 August and September 2021 to ascertain the ability of any other software maintenance and technical support to meet VAs needs. Specifically, the Governments technical experts reviewed similar software and services from Microsoft and IBM to determine whether any other sources can provide maintenance and technical support. Based on this analysis the Government technical experts determined that no other vendor can provide the required brand name Oracle maintenance and technical support as no alternative vendor has access to the proprietary source code required 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 January 2022 by utilizing the NASA SEWP V GWAC 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: N/A

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.

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. Prices under the NASA SEWP V contracts have already been determined to be fair and reasonable. In addition, further price competition is anticipated amongst the vendors on NASA SEWP. The successful quote will also be compared to the independent Government cost estimate.

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 Advocate for Competition, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the acquisition of Oracle Tuxedo and Oracle Tuxedo Jolt software maintenance and technical support, on an other than fair opportunity basis, pursuant to the authority cited in section 4 above, subject to availability of funds, and provided that the services herein described have otherwise been authorized for acquisition.