S02 36C10B24Q0489 JnA Redacted.pdf

Mirantis OpsCare Managed Core Support VA-24-00078404

JUSTIFICATIONFOR 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: 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 Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for brand name Mirantis OpsCare Plus managed core support.

3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The VA Electronic Health Record Modernization-Integration Office (EHRM-IO) has a requirement to renew brand name Mirantis OpsCare Plus managed core support for VA’s existing Mirantis Cloud Native Platform perpetual software license. The VA’s Mirantis Cloud Native Platform is suite of software products that includes Mirantis Container Cloud, Mirantis Kubernetes Engine (formerly Docker Enterprise), Mirantis Container Runtime, Mirantis Secure Registry, and Mirantis OpenStack for Kubernetes. The Mirantis infrastructure allows the VA EHRM-IO Data Migration and Management (DMM) team to run Docker containers to migrate historical clinical data to Oracle Health as part of VA’s conversion from VA VistA to the Oracle Health Millennium Electronic Health Record (EHR). Brand name Mirantis OpsCare Plus managed core support includes 24x7x365 phone, web, and email support. In addition, OpsCare Plus includes fully managed remote operations, a designated customer service manager, lifecycle management, monthly and quarterly reviews, roadmap planning, and alert management. Performance is a 12-month base period with two 12-month option periods. The total estimated value of the proposed action is inclusive of 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 Above: Based on market research, as described in Section 8 of this document, only Mirantis and its authorized resellers can provide the required brand name Mirantis OpsCare Plus managed core support.

The EHRM-IO DMM team requires Mirantis OpsCare Plus Managed Core Support to manage the complex and continuously growing container environment used to support the VistA eXtract of 130 VAMCs (VX130) system. The VX130 system extracts data from all 130 VAMC VistA EHR instances and moves the data quickly and continuously into Oracle Health’s HealtheIntent data platform and into the VA’s Corporate Data Warehouse (CDW). The EHRM-IO DMM team runs Docker containers on premises at the Austin Information Technology Center (AITC) and in

VA’s Azure cloud environment to perform bidirectional data quality checks and to monitor data pipeline integrity on the VX130 system, which keeps the data from all 130 instances synchronized in 5-minute intervals and enable VA to aggregate and reconcile the data. The VA’s existing container environment is based on Mirantis infrastructure and supports the VX130 system. The Mirantis’ infrastructure allows VA to leverage different infrastructures and cloud providers without having to build custom interfaces for each one and allows for the use of Kubernetes and Docker Swarm simultaneously on the same cluster to manage containers and distribute work among various nodes in the cluster. Renewing the brand name Mirantis OpsCare Plus managed core support will ensure that there is no gap in coverage for the existing container environment for the VX130 system. Any other brand name Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) managed core support cannot meet VA’s functional requirements as stated herein. Specifically, only Mirantis and authorized Mirantis resellers are interoperable or compatible with existing VA container environment for the VX130 system which is based on Mirantis infrastructure. The current container system and software communicate through a source code that is based on Mirantis’ proprietary data. No other OEM can provide the required interoperability and compatibility without access to this source code. To introduce another OEM’s software would put the VX130 system data migrations currently being run in containers at risk. Replacing VA’s Mirantis infrastructure with another solution would require purchasing, designing, implementing, and training for a new platform. This redesign/replacement would cost over $150,000 for the software procurement and is estimated to take at least two years to implement, based on previous, similar acquisition costs and deployments. Finally, introducing another software product would put the validation and verification of patient data that is being migrated to Oracle Health at risk, ultimately impacting Veteran care since data quality at the point of care could be affected.

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 Mirantis OpsCare Plus managed core support. 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 and FAR 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D)(i), the award notice for this action will be synopsized on the Contract 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 competed.

8. Market Research: The Government’s technical Subject Matter Experts (SME) conducted web-based market research in January 2024 by reviewing other similar container management software from multiple OEMs, including Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS) and Google Kubernetes Engine, to ascertain if other brands could meet VA’s requirements. While these other OEMs offer container management software, none could meet the VA’s requirements outlined in Section 3 of this justification. In addition, the technical SMEs found that neither Amazon ECS nor Google Kubernetes would run in the existing Microsoft Azure environment.

Specifically, Amazon ECS requires Amazon Web Services cloud instances and Google Kubernetes Engine requires Google cloud instances, which would require subscriptions to those respective cloud services. Based on these market research efforts, the Government’s technical SMEs have determined that only Mirantis OpsCare Plus managed core support can meet all of VA’s functional needs. VA has determined that limited competition is available for this action among authorized resellers of Cisco servers and associated hardware products.

Additionally, the Contract Specialist (CS) conducted market research in June 2024 using the NASA SEWP V GWAC market research and provider lookup tools to determine what vendors are capable of providing the full requirement. Based on this market research, the CS identified several Service- Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses that are Mirantis authorized resellers able to provide the required brand name products to meet the Government’s needs for this effort.

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.

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 because NASA SEWP GWAC prices have previously been determined fair and reasonable.

Additionally, price competition is expected among authorized resellers for this action.

Additional price analysis may be performed in accordance with FAR 15.404-1(b).

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 $750,000, therefore, the certification required by FAR 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(A) serves as the Contracting Officer’s approval.”