TAC-17-36640 NearStar SW Maintenance

JUSTIFICATION FOR OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION



Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)

Office of Acquisition Operations

Technology Acquisition Center

23 Christopher Way

Eatontown, New Jersey 07724



Description of Action: The proposed action is for a Firm-Fixed-Price contract, issued on a sole source basis for continued software maintenance to NearStar, 410 E Main St, Lewisville, TX 75057.



Description of Supplies or Services: VA, Office of Information and Technology, Service Delivery and Engineering, Enterprise Operations (EO), has a requirement to renew the annual NearStar software maintenance. NearStar is production print server software that specializes in relieving VA of other more expensive proprietary print file formats. The software maintenance will consist of software upgrades and updates to include major releases, point releases, service releases and security releases of applicable software. The maintenance and updates are required for the software to remain operational. The period of performance is January 1, 2017 through December 31, 2017 with four 12-month option periods.



Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting other than full and open competition is 41 U.S.C.3304(a)(1) as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.302-1 entitled, "Only One Responsible Source and No Other Supplies or Services Will Satisfy Agency Requirements".



Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited: Based on extensive market research, as detailed in section 8 below, NearStar is the only source that maintains and supports its software, therefore is the only software maintenance that meets the requirements. NearStar is network production print server software which comprises the entire EO print server infrastructure. VA requires continued support for the existing infrastructure to maintain continued operational availability. Only NearStar can provide the necessary software updates because of the propriety source code required to develop and implement software updates. Therefore, no other provider has the rights to access the NearStar proprietary database structures, protocols, and software application programming interfaces which is required in order to maintain the software. Therefore, NearStar software maintenance is the only software maintenance that meets the Government s requirements.



Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in the market research section of this justification. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government's requirements. There is no competition anticipated for this acquisition. Based on market research, NearStar is the only provider of NearStar software maintenance. The proposed action described herein will be synopsized on the Federal Business Opportunities Page as a combined synopsis and solicitation in accordance with FAR 12.603 and FAR 5.203.



Actions to Increase Competition: The Government will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the marketplace that would enable other software maintenance providers to compete on future actions.



Market Research: The Government's technical experts conducted market research during November 2016. Market research included reviews of industry trade publications and conducting internet research to determine if any other software maintenance can meet the Government s requirements. Although other vendors possess similar capabilities to provide the required maintenance, each vendor provides maintenance for its own proprietary software application. Additionally, as discussed in paragraph 5,the vendors identified do not have access to the proprietary source code, existing proprietary database structures, protocols, and software application programming interfaces specific to the maintenance for this particular software. Based on this market research, the Government's technical experts have determined that only NearStar software maintenance can meet all of VA's needs.



The Contract Specialist conducted additional market research in November 2016 by utilizing the Provider Lookup tool on the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement V Governmentwide Acquisition Contract website, and a search on the General Service Administration Advantage website, which did not identify any resellers of the NearStar software maintenance. As a result, NearStar was contacted and confirmed that NearStar is the sole provider of its software maintenance. Ultimately, there are currently no other third party providers who are authorized to sell or maintain NearStar products.



9. Other Facts: None