JOFOC Part 13 Webconnect REDACTED.pdf

Limited Source/Brand Name Justification

United States Department of Agriculture

FAR 13.106-1(b)(1) – Simplified Acquisitions

1. Identification of the agency and the contracting office.

United States Department of Agriculture, Departmental Administration, Office of Procurement and

Property Management, Procurement Operations Division, 301 S. Howes Street, Suite 321, Fort Collins, CO 80521.

2. Description of supply or service required to meet the agency’s needs.

The USDA OCIO NITC requires authority to renew the software maintenance and technical support of a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) for the FAA to provide secure web browser-based emulation to mainframe, midrange and UNIX systems.

WebConnect software product from OpenConnect Systems Incorporated.

OpenConnect Systems Incorporated is the manufacture/owner/developer of these propriety software products and on-going software maintenance and technical support. OpenConnect Systems Incorporated provides maintenance and technical support services for active licenses.

3. The rationale or circumstances for limiting competition.

OpenConnect Systems Incorporated is the proprietary owner of these software products.

As licensed products, this software is proprietary and has various legal restrictions for use and maintenance. Only the software developer has the rights to the source code. The source code is required to make changes and corrections to the software. No other source is authorized for license, maintenance, and technical support of this proprietary software. In addition, only the developer has the expertise to provide the maintenance required for the software.

NITC currently utilizes COTS software products for operations of the mainframe computer system and customer application software supported by the system. The NITC requires this mainframe software maintenance and technical support of these products for the on-going support of the USDA Shared mainframe platform order to support the NITC’s mission of providing information technology (IT) services to its customer agencies. It is necessary to renew the software maintenance and technical support of the software in order to operate with immediate access to technical support if required.

Renewing the software maintenance and technical support for the software will provide that access.

Without the renewal of support, the NITC and our customers will no longer have access to software upgrades and bug fixes cause the systems to be vulnerable.

Proprietary COTS software products from various vendors are currently utilized by the National

Information Technology Center to run customer application software supported on two mainframe computer systems and one open system. This acquisition for the WebConnect product, and for continued software maintenance, upgrades and technical support, supports the

NITC mission of providing “best practice” information technology (IT) services to its customers.

The NITC operates three independent, stand-alone systems for the FAA. These system range from open system (windows) to mainframe operating system based platforms, at its facility located in Kansas City, Missouri. The FAA uses the IBM Product Client Access (Host-On-Demand) to access their systems currently. The FAA has been directed to reduce help desk support costs, to consolidate mainframe information and application identity management, to integrate mainframe with other line of business applications all through a secure web browser-based product. The OpenConnect product WebConnect delivers a cost effective secure solution through concurrent user licensing and retaining all the advantages of secure host connectivity to new and existing applications in "real-time." This product does not require a client product installed on every user’s PC or support personnel in every local regional office to administrate support.

Several important and key unique features of the WebConnect product are:

Accessibility- non-intrusive through a Web-to-host solution providing emulation to mainframe, midrange and LINUX systems, through secure browser-based access to the IBM enterprise hosts.

Administration- Host software installation is centrally located on a server or group of servers, host accessible from Client through internet browser, the average-install time should be less than 15 minutes, and support personnel are minimized.

Operability- This system provides persistent connectivity to support tens of thousands of concurrent browser-based users, while protecting application, session, transport, and host points, with built-in industry standard RSA encryption, support for standard mainframe-based security systems such as

RACF (Resource Allocation Control Facility), ACF2 and Top Secret, plus SNA session level security, it is the most secure solution available.

Security- A Patented secure connection and authentication encryption system is used. It provides certificate-based authentication and encryption by supporting secure socket Layer (SSL) on all connections between client applications and the Server. Server authentication in SSL provides X.509 certificates. SSL provides message authentication to prevent message tampering, and SSL encrypted information migration and access without requiring modification to the host.

Data Security- provided with RC4, from RSA Data Security, Inc. at 40-bit encryption key and 128-bit encryption key. Secure communication is provided through JCP Proxy Server (Java Control Protocol) to transfer information between the Java applet and the mainframe. JCP Proxy Server is a security component protecting the points of entry where the Internet meets the private network and providing filtering of all requests and rejects any request that does not conform to the JCP/JCPS Protocol specification. For reverse proxy environments, a separate port for the JCP, or JCPS service, or both, must be configured.

Renewing the annual technical support from the software developer for the NITC staff and its customers is critical for verifying existing errors and malfunctions, and for obtaining existing detours, fixes, corrections, or modifications to correct errors and malfunctions from the software developer.

4. A description of the market research conducted and the results or a statement of the reason market research was not conducted.

Market Research was conducted and found that only one vendor can provide the license, support and maintenance of the WebConnect software products. These software products are copyrighted by their developer, OpenConnect, and no other source is authorized (or capable) to provide maintenance, upgrades and technical support services for this proprietary software. OpenConnect is not on any government contracts, such as, GSA or NASA SEWP.

5. Estimated price, including all options, if applicable.

N/A

6. Recommended source(s).

OpenConnect Systems Incorporated

POC: Kimberly Merrit kmerritt@openconnect.com

P: 972-888-0694 mailto:kmerritt@openconnect.com

Certifications

Supporting data that is the responsibility of technical or requirements personnel and which form the basis for this justification are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge.

Jill Thorpe

Enterprise Architecture Solutions Environment (EASE), FAA COR

The information contained in this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief and in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation 13.106-1(b)(1), I hereby determine the circumstances described above deem only one source, or limited sources, reasonably available and competition is precluded for the reasons indicated in this document.

Joshua Tafoya

Contracting Officer

JOSHUA

TAFOYA

Digitally signed by JOSHUA

TAFOYA

Date: 2020.09.25 07:31:57 -06'00'