NNG15SD25B-098.pdf

CA Technologies Control Number: VA-20-00024662 Software Maintenance

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: This 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 Computer Associates (CA) Technologies software maintenance.

3. Description of Supplies or Services: This proposed action supports the VA Office of Information and Technology (OI&T), Infrastructure Operations (IO), by renewing maintenance of the existing 42 CA products currently fielded. The software provides a standardized, automated approach to securing and managing enterprise mainframe assets. The software maintenance will consist of software upgrades and updates to include major releases, point releases, service and security releases of applicable software on a quarterly basis, and/or within 48 hours in cases in which a high-risk vulnerability fix becomes available. The software maintenance is necessary for VA, OI&T, IT Operations and Services, IO to be able to operate successfully. The maintenance is required to ensure the software remains operational. The period of performance is Date of Award - March 31, 2021 with two 12-month option periods.

The Government requires the services for continuity of operations. The maintenance is anticipated to be required beyond the initial contract period. No hardware or software licenses will be renewed or procured under this proposed action. The total estimated price of the proposed action is , including all options.

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: Based on market research, as described in Section 8 of this document, it was determined that limited competition is viable among SEWP resellers for the brand name CA software maintenance as described in Section 3 of this justification. The current IO infrastructure is based only on existing CA software, protocols, and programs. Only CA or a reseller can provide the required software maintenance, because of the propriety source code required to develop and implement software updates and upgrades. No other source is capable of providing the required software maintenance that meets VA's unique functional requirements. Without access to this code, maintenance services provided on the software would not be properly configured and render the software inoperable.

Additionally, purchasing a new software product, rather than renewing maintenance of existing licenses, would not be compatible with the existing infrastructure. VA requires software to be interoperable and compatible with the existing infrastructure protocols and functionality for continued operational availability. Use of any other brand name software would not communicate with the existing infrastructure due to the proprietary data constraints. IO requires all the software to integrate into a seamless interface. Other commercial off-the-shelf software products are not designed to integrate into a seamless interface with CA software. In addition, there would be extensive duplicated cost required to develop integration across multiple vendor tools. If the CA software licenses were abandoned in favor of a different product, IO would need to purchase new software licenses and create a new infrastructure to support the new software. Replacing this infrastructure would result in duplicated costs of over that would not be recovered through competition.

This estimate is based on the expert experience in the cost of similar software, knowledge of what IO has currently invested in the existing licenses, and the expert opinion on the estimated labor required to migrate to a different solution and create a new infrastructure. The harm to VA if IO does not receive CA software maintenance would cause a loss of most application and infrastructure monitoring capabilities.

This would result in no visibility into system or application problems and require significant manual intervention to troubleshoot and diagnose system and application problems as they occur. The loss would lead to a substantial disruption of IO current levels of service, adversely affecting the customer and Veterans IO serves. In conclusion, the brand name CA software maintenance is the only software maintenance that meets the Government's requirements.

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 CA 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 Contracting 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 fully competed.

8. Market Research: VA technical experts conducted market research in January 2020 by reviewing similar software products and services to ascertain if these items could meet VA's requirements. The Government's technical experts conducted web-based research on websites and reviewed similar products or tools and software maintenance like ChangeMan from Serna Software and IBM Rational Software. As a result of the market research, the technical experts confirmed that the other companies' software products will not support VA's existing infrastructure protocols, interoperability, and compatibility requirements. In addition, none of these companies have access to CA's proprietary source code required to maintain IO's existing infrastructure. CA or a reseller is the only source capable of providing the required maintenance. Based on the above, only CA software maintenance meets all the Government's requirements.

The Contract Specialist (CS) conducted market research in February 2020 by using the NASA SEWP V GWAC market research and Request for Information tools to determine what vendors are capable of meeting the requirement. Based on this market research, the CS found multiple service-disabled Veteran-owned small businesses capable of meeting the full requirement.

9. Other Facts: N/A