P03 - J A Cisco ESA Final Redacted.pdf

Cisco Email Security Appliance Licensing, Brand Name Leviton or Equivalent Hardware Control Number VA-20-00054544

JUSTIFICATION

FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Acquisition Operations

Technology Acquisition Center 1701 Directors Blvd

Austin, TX 78744

2. Description of Action: The proposed action is for a brand name firm-fixed-price delivery/task order to be issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for brand name Cisco Email Security Appliances (ESAs), ancillary software licenses, and engineering support.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA Solutions Delivery, Security Engineering, Security Engineering Design Implementation (SEDI), Trusted Internet Connection (TIC) Architecture has a requirement for 2,627 Cisco ESAs and ancillary Cisco Thread Grid software licenses with associated engineering support to expand the TIC Gateway Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) solution in order to meet the email demands of the VA. This solution is comprised of a group of technologies derived under the Cisco family of products. The Cisco ESAs are MTAs that are responsible for relaying and securing, both inbound and outbound, email traffic between the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the commercial internet. Security services offered by these appliances include Anti-Virus scanning, Anti-Malware scanning, URL filtering, SenderBase Reputation Score (SBRS), Data Loss Prevention, (DLP), and Advanced Malware Protection. The engineering support services provides specialized technical consulting, onsite service delivery and support to assist with configuration advisement and implementation. The period of performance is 6-months. The total estimated price of this proposed action is .

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: The TIC Architecture Team currently operates and manages VA’s Cisco based ESA solution deployed in all four VA TIC Gateway locations. Due to the VA’s desire to move services to the cloud, and with the introduction of new email requirements that have risen from these cloud deployments, the VA’s email volume has increased significantly and can no longer be processed in a timely manner. This results in delays in email delivery. As many emails are time sensitive, any delay ultimately effects patient impacting services. As the total volume of email increases, this causes the ESAs to accept, process and scan more messages. Once the appliance reaches the threshold of messages its willing to accept, it enters a state known as “Resource Conservation” where it disables its listeners and stops accepting future connections. Once the appliance is able to deliver its work-queue of existing messages, it exits resource conservation and resumes its listeners. During this time, delays in email delivery are observed.

All ESAs across the gateways are clustered together where they share configuration changes and statistics amongst each other. This allows for consistency across the board and offers a more simplistic approach to managing and sustaining the architecture. The communication methods used within the cluster are vendor specific and Cisco proprietary. Additionally, Cisco SMAs (Security Management Appliances) are deployed to collect data for message tracking purposes, email/traffic statistics, and threat detection. These devices are also responsible for storing the messages quarantined by the Anti-Virus, Anti-Malware, Spam and DLP engines on the ESAs. The communication between the SMAs and ESAs is also vendor specific utilizing Cisco based source code, Async Operating System (AsyncOS). The ancillary Thread Grid software assists in the process of transfering emails, without this software the appliance would not communicate with the existing solution which would render the appliance inoperable. Any other manufacturer’s hardware and software would not be able to communicate with the existing solution. In order to meet and process the current and future demand of email, the existing solution needs to be expanded. In order to complete this expansion, engineering support is required. Only Cisco certified and trained engineers can provide customary engineer support services on Cisco solutions.

If the current solution was abandoned for a differenct product, TIC would need to purchase all new ESAs, SMAs and hardware Replacing this infrastructure would result in duplicated costs of over which include the cost for ESA and SMAand would not be recovered through competition. This estimate is based on the procurement of for the initial cost of the ESAs and SMAs, Additionally, the replacement of this infrastructure would take 9 -12 months which would delay deployment and produce further negative impact to email timeliness and patient impacting services.

Based on market research, as described in paragraph 8 of this justification, it was determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for brand name Cisco Email Security Appliance and Security Management Appliance hardware and software licensing.

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 authorized resellers. 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.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: The Government will continue to conduct market research to learn if there are changes in the marketplace that would enable future actions to be competed.

8. Market Research: VA technical personnel conducted market research in January 2020, which consisted of a Market Research request for Quotes on the SEWP portal open to SDVOSB, MRQ #141530. As a result of the market research, it was determined that several resellers have the capability to provide the required brand name Cisco ESAs, ancillary software licenses, and engineering support. While other ESA solutions from alternative manufacturers such as Barracuda Email Security Gateway and FortiMail exist, they do not meet VA’s requirements as outlined in Section 5 of this Justification because only Cisco, through an authorized reseller, can provide the required ESA hardware, ancillary software licenses that communicates through a source codeAsyncOS, based on Cisco proprietary data currently in place across the VA. As a result of the market research, it was determined that no other solution was found to be compatible and interoperable with the existing clustering mechanism of this Cisco networking system. Based on this market research, VA’s technical experts have determined that only brand name Cisco ESA hardware, ancillary software, and engineering support can meet all VA’s needs.

The Contract Specialist (CS) conducted market research in May 2020 by using the NASA SEWP V GWAC Market Research tool to determine what vendors are capable of meeting the requirement. Based on this market research, the CS found multiple resellers capable of meeting the full requirement.

9. Other Facts: None.