20240627_NSSC VoIP JA Brand Name CISCO_Sole Source WWT_Redacted.pdf

CUI

Level Agreement (JELA) with Cisco, that builds upon existing sourcing agreements, supports this request to continue operating and maintaining the current solution. Significant cost is avoided considering the software and feature licensing, which is a substantial part of this contract, is provided for the hardware without cost through the JELA.

This solution is deployed as part of an enterprise Unified Communication System requiring interoperability with other already purchased enterprise hardware. To effectively communicate with each camp/post/station and for each node to serve as redundancy for the other connected nodes, this VoIPaaS Enterprise Solution must have the same components as the others to ensure appropriate Life-Health-and-Safety reliant fidelity. This is especially true in emergency service information provided to PSAP local 911 call centers in a COOP situation. The information must be synchronized for the call managers to cover down no matter what site the call is coming from.

Type, model, and manufacturer may not be substituted. Cisco is the latest DISA (JITC) approved brand. Impact to mission is twofold. The Government needs Cisco and the Government needs the current provider to avoid duplication of costs and achieve interoperability requirements. Use of another brand name will result in incompatibility during implementation and during latter firmware upgrades based on dependencies between firmware, hardware, and software that is proprietary for each specific vendor. The use of another vendor presents risk that emergency service response, elevators phones, analog connections, and more would not communicate appropriately and communication between nodes would be problematic. This results in workarounds and non-standard fixes that could also present cyber vulnerabilities. If firmware updates are not compatible with other systems or are not compliant, this results in extended periods of vulnerabilities, down time for critical emergency calling, and a burden on the government to troubleshoot, repair, and implement more patches and software revisions. It burdens the customer by impacting the reliability of the VoIP system. The enterprise fielding relies on each node speaking the same language. In example, Juniper switches were fielded in the NE Region as “brand name or equal” but in hindsight, there were many technical applications that brand was not able to meet until costly upgrades were made, incurring more cost than was avoided in the selection of the bid. It is similarly inefficient and costly to attempt to do the same, especially in a VoIP Life-Health- Safety where the system is the primary means to report location for first responders.

The current contract was awarded and replacement contract will be awarded under CHESS ITES-3H. The two Cisco authorized resellers that can provide partner managed network as a Service (PMNaaS) are WWT and Iron Bow. However, due to current WWT infrastructure put in place with the current contract, which includes VoIP, analog, fax, elevators, 911 system, and many other systems that work on post, it is cost prohibitive for any other company than WWT to provide these services. Utilizing the existing infrastructure, the Government would avoid significant duplication of costs that another company would have to assume to be competitive to do this work. The cost to retrofit with new hardware effectively limits the ability of another company to compete. The current provider is not burdened with cost of hardware except for replacement of any End of Service hardware during the period of performance. A competitor must procure new hardware which the incumbent has already paid for in the first five-year contract. The Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) list price of these items to be retained after five years of use, comes in at : (1x VG450, 20x 8832, 2100x 7841, 100x 881, 50x 8851 with KEM device). The current provider does not need to invest resources in development of system performance specifications, conduct surveys, and work through months of design and engineering charrettes with the government that a competitor would have to do. In summary, a different provider would have additional cost above and beyond the current provider as shown in the following table.

Table One: Cost Burden comparison for providing a quote

Item WWT Burden Competitor related burden retrofit new hardware into the site, JRSS enterprise, DISA, and cyber security

None – Government paid for this work in the first contract

Four Sr. SME’s at enterprise level worked for approximately 40 hrs each to bring the system online

Cost of new hardware None – Government paid for this work in the first contract

Existing hardware None – Tech refreshes are included

N/A design and engineering development of system performance specifications, conduct surveys, and work through months of planning to rollout 1,400 end points.

Includes

None – WWT/Government paid for this work in the first contract

Undetermined value but design and development took months ahead of the contract award on a weekly basis refining the SOW and conducting site visits to collect metrics for design.

Government SME time to Deploy phones, assist integration with ICAN and enterprise, Routing, Firewall Changes, Documentation changes

None – Government paid for this DAC work in the first contract

Equal to a new equipment fielding. Unable to determine cost of DAC’s and contractors involved.

During a four-week period, six DAC’s were doing nothing but integrating the system and fielding the different modules and hardware.

New Equipment Training None – Government paid for this work in the first contract

Some or most equipment will be different.

Customer support training away from normal duties and documentation creation

None – Government paid for this work in the first contract

Shared work by government and competitor but substantial one week of training for ten NEC employees and countless hours of customer facing document creation

Recovery/Turn-in of deployed system

None Recovery burden for 1600 phones, inventory of 2,700 items, and more on Government

Creation of New system that operates concurrently with no down time for current system.

Exacerbates all factors of cost/time. Concurrent establishment of DISA trunking, data flow, and call management. New phone number assignments because one number cannot exist on two systems.

N/A Burden on both government and competitor. Align two of the same type systems for VoIP. within the Natick 500Mb circuit. Porting of phone numbers that should not change i.e.

SHARP, EEO, Med Clinic, PM systems, other personnel services, and emergency services numbers.

Procurement of a new system when DoD/Army is going through Voice Modernization

N/A, cost is fully recovered.

Burden on a company to recover their cost is a high risk because Army is currently switching to Software Based Direct Inward Dialing (DID) MS Teams phone numbers, replacing 75% of hardware-based VoIP phones.

A competitor would have to more than just duplicate the cost because of pricing today versus five years ago. This is a cost the current contract with WWT has already accounted for that will not be passed on to the Government through competition.

Competition will bring about duplication of costs that are not likely to ever be recovered through competition. Continuing with current vendor avoids costly retrofit of the installation Common user VoIP with replacement hardware, analog phone connectivity, New Equipment Training, and software deployment. A different vendor must also incur recurring cost for initial licensing that would be passed on to the Government whereas the current system is licensed with no recurring cost. Lastly, potential risk must be overcome during integration into the Northeast (NE) Regional CIisco Communication Manager enterprise system to force an unsupported different vendor hardware, Call Manager and an analog Voice Gateway into operating as one system to support failover from site to site.

6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Multiple RFIs on the CHESS ITES-3H website, the most recent closing on 31 May 2024, resulted in responses from WWT and Iron Bow. Both have been determined to be capable of providing the Government requirements. However, it is not feasible at this time to obtain competition for this requirement because there is significant cost involved in competing with a company whose hardware is onsite, operational, and integrated into all installation Voice services. The cost, approximately , to retrofit with new hardware effectively limits the ability of another company to compete to provide these services and represents a duplication of costs that is not likely to be recovered through competition.

7. Actions to Increase Competition: Voice Modernization 2 (VMOD2) prevents this from becoming a perpetual award. Department of Defense / Army is in process of rolling out new software-based MS Teams DID’s and on target to replace hardware VoIP systems. By end of this contract period the need for hardware-based phones would be likely contracted by the six VMOD regional sites for less than 25% of all DoD customers. Competition will no longer be at the local level. The enterprise solution will be managed by large scale contract or provided internal to the government without using an external contract. This VoIP technology is nearing the end of usefulness to the government.

8. Market Research: This system as designed was developed with DISA, utilizing their recommended products compatible with the DISA Voice Gateway and current platform for the Enterprise architecture. In accordance with DFARS 207.401, a Lease versus Purchase was fully demonstrated to be in the best interests of the government by Michael S. Weeden Network & Infrastructure Division Chief utilizing the “Lease-Cost Analysis” worksheet to perform a cost comparison over the five-year lease period. The cost of procuring installation services and hardware were added to information security and software support of Department of Army civilians for the period of five years and compared to the leasing of services, hardware, information security, and software support from a vendor. Influencing factors included: Natick civilian workforce does not have the skilled positions on the Table of Distribution and Allowances to support O&M or high-level troubleshooting for a complex VoIP system; the lease includes replacement of technically complex hardware rebuilds that the site is not staffed to process for End of Life (EOL) replacements; leasing covers both maintenance and the hardware lifecycle replacements for the duration of the contract. The result of the findings to acquire “As a Service” (lease) was found to be favorable over the five-year performance period.

Site visits and testing were performed at other installations and deemed appropriate for node-to-node system operation and functional for system backup and recovery on the enterprise scale. The current system is based on Node coverage residing at other installations as evidenced in our #3 Call Manager server site location at Ft Drum, NY. This provides redundancy and ensures each node site has failover capability. (VMOD 2) integrates the VoIP providing services even further by Regionalization of these services Continental United States (CONUS) wide.

These systems are custom configured to each site’s existing infrastructure, quantity of end users, emergency responder systems, and telephonic requirements. Market research can provide raw data, but this requirement is not an off-the-shelf item that can be shopped from catalog pricing. The requirement is unique and customized.

Multiple requests for information on the CHESS website have resulted in a response from only the current provider. Iron Bow, for the first time, provided a capability brief on 31 May 2024 that stated it is one of the two Cisco resellers that can provide partner managed network as a Service (PMNaaS) and one of a few companies that can deploy and resell Cisco cloud unified communications products. While Iron Bow may have the capability to engineer and install another VoIP solution, using Iron Bow would require the Government to duplicate costs, such as the server hardware which was deployed four years ago and is not a consideration for the incumbent company to purchase. The cost of the servers and other hardware adds to any competitors buildout/proposal. Another factor is time the civilian workforce and technical Subject Matter Experts would need to learn a new system architecture as designed by Iron Bow. Customer training, new equipment training, and service desk support training are burdensome on the Government when we have already trained and support a fully functional system in place. Time spent gathering data from customers which took six weeks to refine, would potentially need to be recreated and then entered into the 911 calling tables in the Cisco Emergency Responder. Install of new communication blocks and wire runs that were part of the WWT rollout for the Voice Gateways are among the items that may need to be recovered by WWT as part of their leased system. Time spent escorting WWT for the month or more they would recover their system is significant. It is not in the best interest of the Government to duplicate these costs.

9. Other Facts:

a Procurement history. This is a follow-on contract to the first and current contract, W52P1J16D0016-W91RUS19F0210, that was solicitated for 30 days without restrictions on CHESS and awarded in 2019. WWT was the only company that attended the site visit held on