AWARD
D -- Veritas sofware maintenancea and technical support
- Notice Date
- 7/6/2020 8:23:20 AM
- Notice Type
- Award Notice
- NAICS
- 541519
— Other Computer Related Services
- Contracting Office
- TECHNOLOGY ACQUISITION CENTER NJ (36C10B) EATONTOWN NJ 07724 USA
- ZIP Code
- 07724
- Solicitation Number
- 36C10B20Q0271
- Archive Date
- 09/04/2020
- Point of Contact
- Joseph.Pignataro@va.gov, Kathryn.Pantages@va.gov, Phone: 732-795-1115
- E-Mail Address
-
joseph.pignataro@va.gov
(joseph.pignataro@va.gov)
- Award Number
- NNG15SD38B36C10B20F0214
- Award Date
- 07/06/2020
- Awardee
- REDHAWK IT SOLUTIONS LLC WOODBRIDGE 22192
- Award Amount
- 2577918.97000000
- Description
- Veritas software maintenance and technical support Control Number VA-20-00033476 Page 3 of 6 Control Number VA-20-00033476 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, New Jersey 07724 2. Description of Action: The proposed action is for a firm-fixed-price task order issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise Wide Procurement V (SEWP) Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC), for renewal of Veritas software maintenance and technical support services. 3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA, Office of Information and Technology, Information Technology Operations & Services (ITOPS), Infrastructure Operations (IO) has a requirement for renewal of software maintenance for the following Veritas software products: 1 Business Critical Services Premier Additional for Infoscale bundle support, 1 Business Critical Services Premier for NetBackup Family, and 1201 terabytes (TB) of NetBackup Platform Base Complete Ed XPLAT 1 Front End TB Onprem, 6000 Education Training Units. Additionally, technical support services renewal comprising 1 Business critical services NetBackup Family Remote Product Specialist, and 1 Veritas NetBackup Resident. The Veritas Capacity software products currently employed within the existing IO enterprise storage infrastructure support data backup and recovery operations for all IO hosted systems, storage, and associated applications that are currently deployed. The aforementioned software maintenance shall consist of patches, bug fixes, new features, and new product releases. In addition, the aforementioned technical support services shall include the review of VA NBU deployments to analyze current performance and trends; reporting problems or deficiencies found in the VA NBU deployments; perform optimizations for each deployment; a dedicated helpdesk support technician; a senior NBU technical support point of contact to provide ongoing expertise for VA's tactical and strategic NBU related initiatives, and training. No hardware or software is being renewed or procured under this proposed action. The period of performance shall consist of a 12-month base period from September 30, 2020 through September 29, 2021 with two 12-month option periods. The total price of the proposed action inclusive of all options is $ 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 justification, it was determined that limited competition is viable among authorized resellers for the required brand name Veritas software maintenance and technical support services. The current enterprise storage infrastructure includes database structures, protocols, and software application programming interfaces only supported by existing Veritas Capacity software for which VA requires renewal of its annual software maintenance and technical support services to ensure continued operational availability. Only Veritas or an authorized reseller has access to the proprietary source code necessary to configure the required patches, bug fixes, new features, and new product releases. Access to the proprietary source code is necessary to provide the maintenance support and technical support services including deployment and implementation support. Failure to acquire the software maintenance and technical support services would cause system failures, putting the 1,201 TB of storage and associated data currently being backed up and restored, including internal VA sensitive information, at risk of security breach and compromise. In addition, only Veritas NetBackup software is interoperable with VA's enterprise backup infrastructure. This backup infrastructure consists of a combination of hardware and software that is all Veritas brand name. Due to the Veritas proprietary coding of the Veritas products, no other brand name software can function and communicate with the existing enterprise backup infrastructure. Use of any other brand name software will result in replacing the existing enterprise backup infrastructure which would result in extensive delivery delays and duplicated costs of approximately $80M that would not be recovered in a competition. These estimates are based on previous efforts for similar items specifically approximately $40M-$60M in backup hardware replacement and $7M-$20M in software licenses. VA's backup data is currently stored within a Veritas proprietary file, known as a catalog, which can only be accessed by Veritas software due it is proprietary nature. No other software can access the Veritas catalog. Without the Veritas software, VA would no longer be able to access its data. The new software would not be compatible with the current application; thus, the government would be forced to duplicate all existing hardware and software, while continuing to maintain and license the current environment. This would require the government to maintain all licensing, software, and hardware for the existing environment in addition to incurring all new Licensing, Software, and Hardware cost for the new environment for a period of up to three years. Additional duplicated costs will be incurred by Networking, Compute, and Storage divisions that will be forced to provide double communication ports to both environments. The duplicated costs associated would require expenditures exceeding $100M. Also, if another brand name software was used the currently accessible backup data would risk transfer and compatibility issues with another software. Specifically, no other brand name software has the ability to read the encrypted coding of the existing software which stores this data, without added third party involvement and risk. This would result in a loss of existing critical Veteran data. 6. 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. Currently, no other companies other than Veritas or an authorized reseller can provide the required software maintenance and technical support services. In accordance with FAR 5.301 and 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), award of the resultant delivery order will be synopsized and this justification will be made publicly available on the Federal Business Opportunities Page within 14 days of award. In accordance with FAR 16.505(a)(4)(iii)(A), the justification will be posted with the request for quote on the NASA SEWP V GWAC website with the solicitation to notify all interested parties. 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 fulfill the Government s need. 8. Market Research: The Government's technical experts conducted market research in February 2020. Market research was conducted by reviewing similar services to ascertain if these products could meet or be modified to meet VA's requirements. Specifically, the Government's technical experts conducted web-based research on vendor websites to include Commvault, Tivoli Storage Manager, Backup Exec, and multiple Google provided sites. Although these vendors offer similar software products and services, only Veritas or an authorized reseller are capable of providing the aforementioned services that meet the Government's requirements as described in section five of this justification. Although these vendors provide similar software and services, these vendors cannot provide the software maintenance and technical support services due to the proprietary constraints within the Veritas product. In April 2020, the Contract Specialist conducted market research to ascertain the extent of limited competition among authorized resellers of the required Veritas software maintenance and technical support services. Through the use of the Provider Look-up tool on the NASA SEWP V GWAC website, 20 Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Businesses were identified as resellers of the required Veritas maintenance and technical support. Therefore, limited competition is anticipated. 9. Other Facts: None 10. Technical and 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. Date: ________________________________ Program Manager Signature: ____________________________ 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 limited competition. Additionally, NASA SEWP V has already determined the prices on contract to be fair and reasonable and more competitive pricing may result from competition. Finally, the successful quote will be compared with the Independent Government Cost Estimate. Date: ________________________________ Procuring Contracting Officer Signature: ____________________________ 12. Procuring Contracting Officer Certification: I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief. Date: ________________________________ Procuring Contracting Officer Signature: ____________________________ 13. Legal Sufficiency Certification: I have reviewed this justification and find it adequate to support an exception to fair opportunity and deem it legally sufficient. Date: ________________________________ Legal Counsel Signature: ____________________________ Approval In my role as procuring activity Advocate for Competition, based on the foregoing justification, I hereby approve the acquisition for Veritas software maintenance and technical support services, on an other than fair opportunity basis pursuant to the statutory authority cited in Section 4 above, subject to availability of funds, and provided that the services herein described have otherwise been authorized for acquisition. Date: ____________ Signature: _________________________________ Advocate for Competition Technology Acquisition Center Office of Procurement, Acquisition and Logistics
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