JA - sewp.pdf

Control Number 36C10B-20-AP-1631

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 sole source 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) to Merlin International Inc., doing business as Merlin Technical Solutions (hereinafter referred to as Merlin) for brand name Atos hardware, software, technical support, and professional services.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The required products and associated services, sourced from Atos International (formerly known as Bull HN Information Systems Inc.), are distributed to the Federal Government by Merlin. The proposed action is to replace end of support Atos virtual tape hardware and software that are connected to VA’s Benefits Delivery Network (BDN) Atos NovaScale 9000 mainframes at the Hines Information Technology Center (HITC) and its disaster recovery (DR) site at the Philadelphia Information Technology Center (PITC) with refreshed technology that is fully supported by the vendor. The scope of the acquisition includes brand name Atos hardware, software, technical support, and professional services associated with the installation and configuration of the newly acquired products and secure migration of settings and media from the Virtual Tape System (VTS) hardware/software currently in use at HITC and PITC, which is currently at End of Life status. The Hines BDN Payment System is comprised of International Business Machines (IBM) mainframe and Atos mainframe systems which process legacy Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) information technology applications supporting the Compensation and Pension, Education, and Vocational Rehabilitation for the nation’s Veterans and dependents.

Refreshed technology is required for the Atos products which are essential for complete system utilization to provide the BDN Payment System functionality. The BDN provides approximately $36 billion dollars annually to Veterans and is a VA mission critical legacy system. The BDN system uses ATOS VTS hardware and software to support batch production processing, all system backups, permanent safekeeping of payment information to support fraud detection, and is an essential part of its DR strategy.

The existing VTS technology was implemented in 2016. Due to technology obsolescence of the current VTS (Atos Virtuo NV Model 825 and V10 Virtuo software, where End of Support status was reached in May 2020, a technical refresh is required to move to a current, supported Atos Virtuo product. The refreshed technology will include Atos’ upgraded Virtuo S hardware, which runs current Virtuo Software Release 12, with the underlying PowerPC processors running AIX 7.2. The Tape Libraries within the VTS will be replaced by as part of this procurement, which will also advance the

BDN Virtual Tape System Technical Refresh Control Number 36C10B-20-AP-1631 underlying cartridge tape technology from LTO6 to LTO8. The period of performance for this action includes a base period of 12 months and two 12-month option periods.

All hardware and professional services will be procured in the base period only. Option periods are for the continued software licensing and technical support. The total estimated value of the proposed action is $1,663,065.01, inclusive of two option years.

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: The proposed sole source for this action is Merlin International, Inc., 4B Inverness Court East, Suite 100, Englewood Colorado, 80012. Merlin currently has an exclusive partnership agreement in place with Atos and is presently the sole-source supplier of the required Atos hardware, software, technical support, and professional services to the United States Federal Government.

VA’s BDN mainframes and their associated VTS hardware and software are proprietary products produced by Atos. VA is dependent on this Atos technology for Veterans payment systems due to the application’s dependence on proprietary Atos middleware and application programming interfaces (APIs), and will remain so until the applications are replaced or rehosted. While the VTS products are peripherals, their function is closely integrated with Atos’ proprietary General Comprehensive Operating Supervisor 8 (GCOS 8) operating system, its backup software, and its Tape Management System 8(TMS 8) software, and no other vendor offers any form of tape technology that has been qualified on a Atos GCOS 8 NovaScale mainframe. The current Atos NovaScale mainframe, Transaction Processor Servers (TPS), GCOS 8 Network Service Processors (GNSP), Internal Operational Service Processors (IOSP), Escala Servers, Gallagher & Robertson Gateway (GGATE) Servers and Optima Disk Subsystems located at the HITC and PITC will not be updated at this present time so the VTS software must be capable of interfacing with these components. Atos has implemented its VTS technology functions with GCOS 8, its backup software, Job Control Language (JCL), and its APIs in a unique way, where virtual tape drives that emulate STK9840 cartridge drives as seen by the GCOS 8 Operating System, but these are actually portions of the memory of the VTS that are in turn backed up by disk cache. In other words, GCOS is generally unaware that Virtual Tape is being used, except that there is Bull proprietary dialogue between the TMS 8 software and the VTS that instructs the VTS on when to scratch virtual tapes and is used to keep the VTS database and the TMS 8 database consistent. The Atos software is proprietary and communicates through proprietary source code which only Atos or an authorized reseller can maintain.

If any other source was to provide the technical services without the Atos proprietary source code, it would not be able to distribute software patches, upgrades, and security fixes. Additionally, the professional services require extensive knowledge of the Atos hardware and operating system to install, configure, test, and diagnose the VTS products to verify interoperability and compatibility with the existing infrastructure. As

Merlin is the sole provider of these products and professional services to the Government, it is considered the only source. Only Merlin can provide the Atos hardware, software, technical support, and professional services required for the VTS technical refresh.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in the market research section of this document. This effort did not yield any additional sources or products that can meet the Government’s requirements. It was determined that there is a single authorized reseller for these required products and services. There is no competition anticipated for this acquisition. In accordance with FAR 5.301 and 16.505(b)(2), this action will be synopsized at award on the Federal Business Opportunities Page (FBO) and the 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.

8. Market Research: The VA program office conducted market research in April 2020.

The Government’s technical experts reviewed similar mainframe computer performance software, products, and support services to ascertain if they could meet VA’s requirements. Specifically, the Government’s technical experts reviewed similar products from companies and organizations including Dell, IBM, and Oracle. None of the products offered by these companies can meet VA's interoperability and compatibility requirements as detailed in Section 5. Dell, IBM, and Oracle’s software cannot communicate with or through the existing Atos proprietary source code. In addition, in April 2020 the Government’s technical experts reviewed Forrester Research, Gartner Research, and conducted research on technical mainframe computer websites and web-based forums related to the mainframe computer performance requirements to identify potential mainframe computer performance software solutions that could meet the Government’s requirements. All of the products and services offered by these sources were found unable to meet the unique functional performance requirements for the GCOS 8 intercommunication which provides message exchange over a TCP/IP network, TMS8 inter-communication which provides automatic logical volume ejection and scratching according to TMS8 criteria and import/export of GCOS 8 logical volumes.

In July 2020 further market research was conducted. A Request For Information (RFI) was posted on NASA SEWP V and SAM.beta.gov contract opportunities website (formerly FBO). Two responses were received and evaluated. The response from Veteran Technology Partners, LLC (VTP) was found unacceptable as the proposed solution could not meet the functional performance requirements for the GCOS 8 intercommunication which provides message exchange over a TCP/IP network, TMS8 inter-communication which provides automatic logical volume scratching according to TMS8 criteria and import/export of GCOS 8 logical volumes. The response from IT Solutions and Services (ITSS), Inc.was reviewed, in which the vendor proposed utilization of the ATOS solution. However, as Merlin currently has an exclusive partnership agreement in place with Atos, and is presently the sole-source supplier of the required Atos hardware, software, technical support, and professional services to the United States Federal Government, IT Solutions and Services, Inc. was found unable to meet the Government requirements. The Government contacted VTP on August 27, 2020 and informed them that they were found not capable of meeting the requirements. The Government also contacted ITSS on August 27, 2020 and informed them that while they proposed use of the Atos solution, they were not found to be an authorized vendor, only Merlin is an authorized reseller that can meet the requirements.

To date, the Government has not recieved any feedback.

Lastly, in January 2020, Atos was directly contacted and replied with a letter confirming that Merlin International is the sole source supplier of Atos proprietary mainframe products and associated services required to complete a technical refresh of the VTS.

The BDN Payment System processes on Atos World Wide Information Systems GCOS 8 Operating Systems Software, Release 8.0 and Transaction Processor 8 (TP8) database on an Atos NovaScale 9000/544 mainframe system. The existing VTS solution utilizes the Atos GCOS TMS release 8 (TMS8) software and GCOS8, and Atos has qualified no other Virtual Tape product for this role. The GCOS suite of software is proprietary to Atos HN and licensed by Merlin to VA. Merlin is presently the sole source authorized vendor to supply the Atos hardware and software to the Federal Government.

The Contract Specialist conducted market research in July 2020 through the use of the Provider Lookup Tool on the NASA SEWP V GWAC website. The research revealed that Merlin is a provider for the brand name Atos products, installation, and support.

Additionally, NASA SEWP V has a dynamic catalog where line items can be added based on customer requests; therefore, as long as the required item or service is within scope of the NASA SEWP V contracts, items and services can be added to the catalog on a daily basis.

Merlin is the only authorized vendor to supply the Atos hardware, software, technical support, and professional services to the Federal Government. Merlin is a Veteran- Owned Small Business, Group A (Original Equipment Manufacturers) NASA SEWP V GWAC contract holder. Based upon the above, this requirement will be solicited directly to Merlin, doing business as Merlin Technical Solutions which is in Group A on the NASA SEWP V GWAC as a small business, and the Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity will be posted with the request for quotation.

9. Other Facts: None.

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.

Dawn Sturtz Date:_______________________________

Service Line Manager, Mainframe Management Signature: __________________________

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 based on anticipated competition and discounts among NASA SEWP V GWAC holders.

Additionally, NASA SEWP determines that all catalog prices on its GWAC’s are fair and reasonable. Additional price analysis may be performed in accordance with FAR 15.404-1(b).

Debra Clayton Date: ________________________________

Procuring Contracting Officer Signature: ____________________________

12. Procuring Contracting Officer Certification: I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Debra Clayton Date: ________________________________

Procuring Contracting Officer Signature: ____________________________

Approval

In my role as procuring activity Advocate for Competition, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the acquisition of ATOS VTS hardware,software, technical support, and professional services 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 property and services herein described have otherwise been authorized for acquisition.

Date: ____________ Signature: _________________________________ Philip Weckesser Advocate for Competition Technology Acquisition Center

Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics