AWARD
D -- TAC-19-55707_Hardware Asset Management (HWAM) Ancillary Gigamon and Maintenance
- Notice Date
- 7/11/2019
- Notice Type
- Award
- NAICS
- 541519
— Other Computer Related Services
- Contracting Office
- Department of Veterans Affairs;Technology Acquisition Center;23 Christopher Way;Eatontown NJ 07724
- ZIP Code
- 07724
- Solicitation Number
- 36C10B19Q0380
- Archive Date
- 9/30/2019
- Point of Contact
- ioannis.vardouniotis@va.gov
- Award Number
- NNG15SD34B 36C10B19F0271
- Award Date
- 7/2/2019
- Awardee
- MINBURN TECHNOLOGY GROUP, LLC;10113 MINBURN ST;GREAT FALLS;VA;22066
- Award Amount
- $259,822.68
- Description
- Hardware Asset Management (HWAM) Ancillary Gigamon and Maintenance Support TAC-19-55707 Page 2 of 2 TAC-19-55707 JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Procurement Acquisition and Logistics Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07724 Description of Action: This proposed action is for a firm-fixed-price (FFP) delivery order (DO) issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) to acquire Gigamon components. Description of the Supplies or Services: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Information and Technology (Ol&T), Information Technology Operations and Services (ITOPS) requires Gigamon support equipment for its Gigamon Port Aggregation/Network Traffic Filtering appliances which are being implemented by VA OI&T to provide capabilities and tools that identify cyber security risks in accordance with the Continuous Diagnostics and Mitigation (CDM) program sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This initiative requires additional Gigamon installations at multiple VA locations. VA collaborated with OHS to generate the approved CDM Hardware Asset Management (HWAM) configuration components and this requirement is necessary to acquire the additional Gigamon components to complete the FY19 installations for CDM. Hardware shall be delivered no later than 30 days after receipt of order. The period of performance for support services shall be 12 months from date of hardware delivery acceptance by the Government for an overall period of up to 24 months after award. The option to increase quantities is included for additional components and additional support services for the components. The total estimated value of the proposed action inclusive of optional quantities is $. Statutory Authority: Pursuant to Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subpart 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 Subpart 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." Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: Based on market research, as described in section 8 of this justification, VA has determined that limited competition is viable among resellers of brand name Gigamon components. The requested additional Gigamon components (i.e., GigaSMART SMT-HC0-X16. Gigamon Small Form-Factor Pluggable (SFPs), and GigaTAP M Series TAP modules) are required since each of these components are fully compatible to integrate with each of VA's existing Gigamon Port Aggregation/Network Traffic Filtering HC Series Visibility Node (i.e. GigaVUE HC- 2 Fabric Node) appliances. The Gigamon SMT-HC0-X16 module is a component that will be installed into existing Gigamon GigaVUE-HC2 chassis. The manufacturer has designed and built the GigaVUE-HC2 product in such a way that it will accept only Gigamon brand components. Additionally, no other manufacturers make modules or equivalent components for the GigaVUE-HC2 chassis. The core GigaSMART (i.e., SMT-HCO-X16) components are specifically designed to be installed within VA's existing GigaVue HC-2 appliances to also provide the Slicing, Masking, Source Port & GigaVUE Tunneling, De-Encapsulation software capabilities for specific VA sites. This component also contains an advanced processing engine which can be accessed anywhere within the Gigamon Visibility Platform without port- or card-based restrictions. This component is also foundational to allowing VA the flexibility to combine multiple GigaSMART engines to manage higher traffic loads and optimize for specific applications. Applications can be combined, or service chained so traffic benefits from multiple functions that can be achieved at once, such as generating NetFlow and other network metadata or decrypting SSL/TLS traffic after packet duplicates have been removed, or stripping VLAN headers before load balancing the traffic and sending it out to the appropriate tools. The additional requested GigaTAP M251 Series TAP modules are fully compatible with VA's existing installations of Gigamon G-TAP M-Series Chassis (i.e., Gigamon TAP-M200s). The manufacturer has designed and built the TAP-M200 product in such a way that it will accept only Gigamon brand TAP modules. Additionally, no other manufacturer makes TAP modules or equivalent components for the Gigamon TAP-M200 chassis. Each TAP-M251 module is required to support 1110Gb SX/SR link speed for up to 6 network links for multimode (MM) fiber and 50/50 split ratio necessary at two VA sites. The additional Gigamon SFPs (i.e., SFP-501, SFP-502, SFP-503, SFP-532, SFP-533) are specifically designed optics to be installed with VA's existing GigaSMART SMT-HCO-X16 modules. These Gigamon SFPs are components that will be installed into existing Gigamon SMT-HCO-X16 module. The manufacturer has designed and built the SMT-HCO-X16 product in such a way that it will accept only Gigamon brand SFP's. Additionally, no other manufacturer makes SFP's or equivalent components for the Gigamon SMT-HCO-X16 module. No other suite of products is compatible or interoperable with the existing Gigamon products due to proprietary hardware structures, protocols, and software application programming interfaces. In addition, there would be extensive duplicated cost required to develop integration across multiple vendor tools. If the Gigamon products were abandoned in favor of a different product, ITOPS would need to purchase new hardware and software to create a new enterprise-wide infrastructure. This duplicated effort would include replacing the entire Gigamon hardware and software currently fielded to compose the Infrastructure Operations (IO) infrastructure, which is extensive across 150 plus VA field sites. Replacing this infrastructure would result in duplicated costs of over $5 million that would not be recovered through competition and extensive delivery delays. This estimate is based on the expert experience in the cost of similar products, knowledge of what ITOPS has currently invested in the existing infrastructure, and the expert opinion on the estimated labor required to migrate a different solution and create a new infrastructure. If ITOPS does not receive Gigamon products, it would cause a loss of enterprise security visibility, automation of processes, and existing network threat correlations, affecting how ITOPS protects data for Veterans. Gigamon brand name components will continue to build upon the existing production cybersecurity infrastructure that the OHS COM program continues to implement for the IO Cybersecurity Management operations and maintenance of cybersecurity infrastructure. No other brand name network monitoring intrusion prevention solutions can integrate with the architecture and licensing of the IO Console and thus will not allow security visibility of malware activity on the network. VA requires the additional requested Gigamon components to support the re-configuration of the site's infrastructure to accommodate the concurrent installation of the HWAM components. This effort is in support of VA functions that are required per documented Federal Information Security Management Act controls. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in the market research section of this document. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government's requirements. It was determined however that limited competition is viable among resellers for the required brand name equipment and maintenance manufacturer, Gigamon. In accordance with FAR 5.301 and 16.505(b)(2), this action will be synopsized at award on the Federal Business Opportunities Page (FBO) and the justification will be made publicly available. Actions to Increase Competition: In order to remove or overcome barriers to competition in future acquisitions for this requirement, the agency will work with the program office to continue to perform market research to consider and ascertain if any other sources can provide the required hardware and software maintenance services in the future. Additionally, VA networking Subject Matter Experts regularly review industry trade publications and conduct internet research to ascertain if any other brand name software is available. Market Research: The Government's technical experts conducted market research beginning in January 2019. This included reviewing other similar component providers to ascertain if any other sources, other than Gigamon, or a reseller of these products, can provide the aforementioned hardware components and maintenance support. Specifically, NetScout, lxia, and APCON products were researched. Based on technical reviews as well as hands-on experience using competing monitoring software, the Government's technical experts determined that only Gigamon components or resellers of the components can support the established requirements. Other brand names cannot provide the required interoperability with the existing Gigamon equipment already being utilized in IO. Therefore, the Government's technical experts determined that no other similar components can meet the Government's network monitoring requirements previously discussed. Market research was conducted in May 2019 utilizing the NASA SEWP V website using the Provider Look Up tool. The Provider Lookup tool revealed multiple verified Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small business (SDVOSB) resellers of Gigamon products in Group B 2. Additionally, the TAC conducted a Request for Information on NASA SEWP V, which revealed one verified SDVOSB vendor who is interested and capable of meeting all of the Governments requirements. NASA SEWP V GWAC has a dynamic catalog where line items can be added based on customer requests; therefore, as long as the required item or service is within scope of the NASA SEWP V GWACs, items and services can be added to a NASA SEWP V GWAC holder's catalog on a daily basis. Therefore, based on the results of the market research, there is reasonable expectation that limited competition exists among verified SDVOSBs in Group B (2). Other Facts: N/A NOTE: THIS NOTICE WAS NOT POSTED TO FEDBIZOPPS ON THE DATE INDICATED IN THE NOTICE ITSELF (11-JUL-2019); HOWEVER, IT DID APPEAR IN THE FEDBIZOPPS FTP FEED ON THIS DATE. PLEASE CONTACT 877-472-3779 or fbo.support@gsa.gov REGARDING THIS ISSUE.
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Link To Document
(https://www.fbo.gov/notices/f3d957d4444b4e9f11efe591acae19a3)
- Record
- SN05367940-F 20190713/190711230124 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
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