Redacted JA.pdf

CONTROL NUMBER VA-26-00081875

JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY

1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07724

2. Description of Action: The proposed action is for a firm-fixed price Delivery Order issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for renewal of brand name BMC Control-M Software from BMC Software, Inc.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA, Financial Service Center (FSC), Financial Management Business Transformation (FMBT) has a requirement for software maintenance and continued support of the existing brand name BMC Control-M Software. VA FSC/FMBT currently owns 1500 Control-M licenses, 1500 Control-M Workload Archiving licenses and 1500 Control-M Workload Change Manager licenses.

The FSC/FMBT is requesting continued support and maintenance of the currently used 1200 Control-M licenses and 1200 Control-M Workload Archiving Tasks. The BMC Control-M Management software supports the FMBT program in support of the Integrated Financial Accounting Management System (iFAMS). The brand name BMC Control-M software relies on workflow orchestration to monitor, schedule, manage, alert, and report batch job functions and actions.

The FSC currently owns the perpetual licenses of the software scheduler, the Workload Archiving and the Workload Change Manager, yet requires the maintenance support for the task quantity that is intended to be used over the period of performance. The brand name Control-M software is required to continue the centralized job scheduling in support of development and production efforts for FSC/FMBT. This software is currently installed on servers in VA’s Enterprise Cloud (VAEC). The brand name Control-M software has been utilized to modernize the VA FSC/FMBT job scheduling capabilities by providing batch input management, job analysis capabilities, and support going across multiple cloud platforms, not tied to a specific cloud service providers network.

The software support shall include software upgrades, security patches and firmware updates. The period of performance shall be September 25, 2026 - September 24, 2027, for the base period, with 4 12-month option periods, and 3 optional tasks. The purchase price of the optional tasks shall be prorated and co-termed to the current period of performance. All optional tasks shall include the same technical assistance and workload archiving functionalities as the base tasks for that period of performance.

Optional tasks for additional licenses to be used are assigned in 100 quantity intervals and can be exercised up to 3 times per period of performance. The total estimated value of the proposed action is , inclusive of all option periods and optional tasks.

4. Statutory Authority: This 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 Revolutionary Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Overhaul (RFO) VA Deviation 16.507-6(b)(2), 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: Based on market research as described in Section 8 of this justification, it was determined that limited competition is available among resellers of the required brand name BMC Control-M software perpetual software licenses, software support and maintenance of these perpetual licenses. The BMC Control-M brand name software is the only software that can meet VA’s needs. Any other brand name software is unable to integrate with the currently fielded BMC Control-M software. The BMC Control-M’s licenses are currently being utilized to provide cloud ready scheduling, job execution, notification sizing, cloud support and environment, dashboard, technical support, reporting functionality and security while providing batch job file transfers. While there are other application programming interface (API) software packages, the BMC Control–M Automation API offers more flexibility and automation capabilities. VA requires automated jobs requiring access to local resources or running on a remote machine, which is ideal for distribution of workforce to manage jobs on remote servers. The Jobs-as-Code automation rules are emerging in the DevOps community, and this approach stores job definitions in source control repositories such as GitHub. Python and Java are well known programming languages that can also automate Control-M jobs. The libraries that these two programming languages hold can be heavily used for complex workflows and also support Job-as-Code. There is currently no other brand name that can mirror the Control – M and replace these one-for-one without having to re-work five years of configuration and performance tuning. Only BMC Control-M can meet this functional requirement as these licenses are proprietary to BMC solutions. The purchase of another brand name license software package, maintenance and technical support, in order to continue management batches, would be detrimental to the current progress of VA projects, to the budget, and significantly impact the FSC/FMBT job scheduling capabilities. Furthermore, the current taskings would need to be re-accomplished in order to implement another type of job management licensing. This would cause a delay in performance and would be waste of government resources. Training would be needed as would time to come up to speed. Any certified distributor of BMC is the only source that can meet VA’s current need.

Without access to BMC Control-M proprietary source code, no other source is able to provide maintenance or technical support inclusive of program bug fixes, patches, and workarounds, and technology releases, which may include general maintenance releases, selected functionality releases and documentation updates.

The brand name BMC Control-M Software is the only software that can satisfy VA’s requirements discussed within this document without VA experiencing significant negative impact to Veterans and VA at a substantial duplication of the cost that would not be recovered through competition.

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 for brand name Control – M licenses, as well as software maintenance and support. In accordance with RFO 5.301, the award notice for this action will be synopsized on Contract Opportunities and the 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 competed.

8. Market Research: The Government’s technical experts conducted market research from 26 June to 4 August 2026 on NASA SEWP and via direct vendor contact.

Commercial products are available to meet the Government’s requirements. The desired brand name BMC Control-M perpetual software licenses, software support and maintenance is available on NASA SEWP V GWAC, through authorized 3rd party resellers. There are 35 3rd party resellers that are capable sources that can provide the required brand name BMC Control-M perpetual software licenses, associated support and maintenance of these perpetual licenses, including 9 Service-Disabled Veteran- Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) re-sellers. Other 3rd party resellers on the NASA SEWP V GWAC that are not currently authorized 3rd party resellers can add this product and associated service/maintenance to their NASA SEWP V GWAC which increases competition.

BMC Software is one of the leading software providers of job scheduling capabilities.

Another of these is the ActiveBatch Workload Automation by Redwood Software, Inc.

Both of these platforms offer the drag-and-drop job scheduling option and are intuitive user interfaces to make building workflows easy for users. They are accessible through web interfaces and mobile applications, such as Windows, Linux open-source operating system, from a single platform. Each one provides IT to retain full control of jobs, privileges, and security and can enable multi-factor authentication to protect against unauthorized access. At initial procurement, ActiveBatch was considered, however, provided more than was needed and did not have a more basic package. This software is not compatible with the currently owned BMC Control M software licenses. The purchase of ActiveBatch licenses to replace the BMC Control M licenses would require rolling back performance of five years of job scheduling and interface applications. This would entail countless hours of manpower that would need to re-accomplish the process and there is no guarantee that the project would be as effective or in a functioning position. While the pricing for these licenses is comparable to the BMC Control – M licenses, the cost to replace the Control-M licenses with these would be wasteful and additional funding is currently not available to re-apply completed performance.

Another leading workload software is the Stonebranch workload automations software, Universal Automation Center (UAC) from Stonebranch, Inc. This product is a modern automation platform that also offers a united approach to information technology automation. Some of the key features that these share with the requirements are multi-platform and multi-cloud support, real-time monitoring and reporting, dynamic job and resource allocation, integration with file transfer and managed file transfer. Both are skillful with compliance and audit trail capabilities. Service and support are very good.

While Stonebranch UAC has leaned more with the public sector and UAC is remarkable in performance, it is not compatible with the brand name BMC Control – M license. UAC cannot be swapped for performance with the brand name BMC Control – M software to continue performance on the FMBT project. The brand name BMC Control – M software has been utilized since at least 2019 of big data pipeline management and self-service infrastructure within the program and a one-for-one replacement is not compatible.

Based on all the market research efforts the Government’s technical experts have determined that only brand name BMC Control-M software can meet all of VA’s needs.

The Contract Specialist conducted additional market research on August 04, 2026 by utilizing the NASA SEWP V GWAC Provider Lookup and Market Research Tools to determine whether the brand name BMC Control – M software, associated support and maintenance is available from authorized resellers that are holders of a NASA SEWP V GWAC. It was determined that there are at least 33 authorized resellers, inclusive of at least 5 SDVOSBs, that hold current NASA SEWP V contracts and are authorized resellers of BMC Control-M products and services. Therefore, limited competition is expected among SDVOSBs that are holders of a NASA SEWP V GWAC and are authorized resellers of brand name BMC Control-M products and services.

9. Other Facts: None

10. Technical Requirements Certification

I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance, which are included in this justification, are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Ken Hawbecker Date Chief, iFAMS iTOS Technical Operations VA Financial Services Center

11. Fair and Reasonable Cost Determination

I hereby determine that the anticipated price to the Government for this contract action will be fair and reasonable based on anticipated competition Additionally, NASA SEWP V GWAC has already determined the prices on contract to be fair and reasonable.

Finally, the successful quote will be compared to the Independent Government Cost Estimate.

Kendra M. Casebolt Date Contracting Officer Technology Acquisition Center Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics Department of Veterans Affairs

12. Contracting Officer Certification/Approval

I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief. This contract action exceeds the simplified acquisition threshold, but does not exceed $900,000, therefore, the certification required by RFO 16.507-6(e)(1) serves as the Contracting Officer’s approval.

Kendra M. Casebolt Date Contracting Officer Technology Acquisition Center Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics Department of Veterans Affairs