P03 - 3850 Commvault Brand Name Justification - FINAL_Redacted.pdf

Commvault Software

5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: As the OEHRM Data Migration and Data Syndication environment has continued to grow, use by clinicians and researchers has increased dramatically, and OEHRM continues to require additional storage, which in turn requires the ability to back up the data to meet demand. This acquisition is necessary to extend the capacity of the OEHRM backup environment, which currently utilizes Commvault products to support its operations, to ensure protection for the ever-increasing amount of invaluable data housed by OEHRM, as well as the data analyses generated by the clinicians and researchers who use the OEHRM environment.

Based upon the market research, as described in section 8 of this justification, no product other than Commvault licenses can meet the Government’s needs. If another brand software was introduced, there would be interoperability and compatibility issues with the existing Commvault software. Specifically, any other brand name software would not be able to communicate and interoperate with the software protocols and functionality necessary for the continued operational availability of the platform due to proprietary technical data constraints of the current software. Only Commvault licenses can extend the existing backup environment to allow for the increasing amount of data stored by OEHRM, and only Commvault can provide the necessary software maintenance plan because of the proprietary software source code required to develop and implement updates. If additional Commvault backup licenses are not purchased, the data housed by OEHRM, as well as the data analyses generated by the clinicians and researchers who use the OEHRM environment, will soon exceed the capacity of the current backup environment and the amount of required backend storage will exceed the available storage space. This will put the petabytes of data currently being backed up in the OEHRM environment at risk, thereby jeopardizing the work of OEHRM clinicians, researchers and information technology (IT) technical engineers engaged in data migration, data syndication and research and operations to improve healthcare for Veterans and ultimately impact patient care. Procuring an alternate software, rather than continuing to use the Commvault brand would result in substantial duplication of costs that would not be recovered through a new competitive acquisition.

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, it was determined that limited competition is viable among resellers for these brand name items. 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 Federal Business Opportunities website and this justification will be made publicly available within 14 days of award.

Commvault Software

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 competed.

8. Market Research: Market research was conducted in March and April 2020 by the Government’s technical experts to determine the availability of backup licenses capable of meeting VA’s requirements. Backup licenses from many vendors including Acronis, Rubrik, Cohesity, Veritas, and Microsoft were investigated by performing in-depth web research and watching video advertisements on technical capabilities. However, it was found that none of these vendors products are capable of meeting VA’s requirements based on the reasons described in section 5 above.

This research confirmed that Commvault is the only supplier of the required backup licenses, backup support, and associated maintenance support that are needed to support the ever expanding OEHRM environment.

Additional market research was conducted by Government representatives in May 2020 utilizing the NASA SEWP V Provider Lookup Tool, which found a total of 78 resellers of Commvault Systems brand name products, 19 of which are Service- Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business contract holders in Group B(2).

9. Other Facts: None.