CommVault Data Protection Licensing Maint. Renewal

Commvault Maintenance Support



2 of 5



Commvault Simpana Maintenance Support









JUSTIFICATION

FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY



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

Office of Acquisition Operations

Technology Acquisition Center

23 Christopher Way

Eatontown, New Jersey 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 Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for the procurement of brand name CommVault Simpana software maintenance support.



3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The proposed action is to procure brand name CommVault Simpana software maintenance support for existing CommCell systems and Veterans Health Administration (VHA) VA Medical Center (VAMC) servers and database backups containing critical data in support of direct patient care operations for VA Office of Information and Technology Service Delivery and Engineering, Field Operations Region 3. CommVault Simpana is utilized within Region 3 facilities to provide standardized backup, file replication, and data recovery solutions that meet facility disk tiering and data protection requirements. CommVault Simpana software is currently deployed as the backup software for all of Region 3, Non Vista Data Centers and Vista Data Centers, including the Warner Robbins Defense Enterprise Computing Center (DECC). This software is also required to support Region 3 alternate site processing of its critical virtualization environment. The required software maintenance support shall include bug fixes, upgrade releases and enhancements, and periodic updates. The period of performance for this action is 12 months from August 1, 2017 through July 31, 2018. The total estimated price of the proposed action is



4. Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting an exception to fair opportunity is 41 U.S.C. 4106(c)(2) as implemented by Federal Acquisition Regulation (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, it was determined that limited competition is available among resellers. As stated above, VA requires maintenance support on its existing CommVault Simpana software, and only CommVault, or an authorized reseller, can provide the necessary bug fixes, upgrade releases and enhancements, and periodic updates because of the proprietary source code. No other software developer has the intellectual property rights to access and modify the CommVault Simpana source code, which is required in order to execute the needed bug fixes, upgrades and updates. Therefore, no other brand software maintenance will satisfy the Government s requirements.



6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in the market research section of this document. In accordance with FAR 5.301 and 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D) the resulting contract award will be announced on the Federal Business Opportunities Page and this Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity will be made publicly available. In addition, this Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity will be posted on the NASA SEWP V website with the solicitation.



7. Actions to Increase Competition: In order to remove or overcome barriers to competition in future acquisitions for this requirement, the Government will continue to perform market research to determine if there are any new products or maintenance services available that will enable future requirements to be competed.



8. Market Research: The Government s technical experts conducted market research in February 2017 by conducting internet searches and reviews of published

technical data for backup software available from NetBackup and Symantec Backup Exec. As a result of the market research, the technical experts confirmed that the source code required to issue the bug fixes, upgrades and updates is proprietary to CommVault. While other backup software manufactures exist, no other manufacturers can access the CommVault source code in order to maintain the existing software. Based upon this research, the Government s technical experts have determined that only CommVault brand name software maintenance can meet all of VA s requirements.



Additional market research was conducted in April 2017 by the Contract Specialist by utilizing the Provider Lookup tool on the NASA SEWP V GWAC website which identified numerous resellers of the required Commvault software and maintenance support including 19 prospective Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) GWAC holders. Therefore, competition is anticipated on NASA SEWP V among authorized resellers of the required brand name maintenance support.



9. Other Facts: None.