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FBO DAILY ISSUE OF SEPTEMBER 22, 2011 FBO #3589
DOCUMENT

70 -- HP Load Runner Software & Maintenance for VBA Performance Testing - Attachment

Notice Date

9/20/2011
 

Notice Type

Attachment
 

NAICS

511210 — Software Publishers
 

Contracting Office

Department of Veterans Affairs;Center for Acquisition Innovation-Austin;1701 Directors Blvd;Suite 600;Austin TX 78744
 

ZIP Code

78744
 

Solicitation Number

VA11811RQ0034
 

Archive Date

10/2/2011
 

Point of Contact

Angela Deren
 

E-Mail Address

1-4432<br
 

Small Business Set-Aside

N/A
 

Award Number

NNG07DA46B VA118A-11-F-0136
 

Award Date

9/2/2011
 

Awardee

ALVAREZ & ASSOCIATES, LLC;8601 GEORGIA AVE STE 510;SILVER SPRING;MD;209103476
 

Award Amount

$143,342.94
 

Description

JUSTIFICATION AND APPROVAL FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY 1.Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Acquisition and Logistics Center for Acquisition Innovation - Austin 1701 Directors Blvd., Suite 600 Austin, TX 78744 2.Description of Action: This proposed action is for a Firm-Fixed-Price Delivery Order (DO) issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) IV Government-Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC), for Hewlett Packard (HP) brand name software license subscriptions for the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) Performance Test System. Additionally, maintenance services are required for the aforementioned HP brand name software license subscriptions. The period of performance for the software license maintenance services will be for a base period of one (1) year with four (4) one (1) year options. 3.Description of Supplies or Services: This procurement will provide the VBA Performance Test System the capability of simulating reporting usage on the VBA Corporate System to better measure performance loads during peak usage periods. The VBA Corporate System is a mission critical application, which is sponsored by VBA and supports the following business lines: Compensation and Pension Services; Education Services, and Loan Guaranty Services and system is maintained by Office of Information & Technology (OIT) Operations Region 5. OIT, Region 5 Field Operations is in need of software and maintenance services for HP Load Runner suite of products supporting the VBA Performance Test System. This software enables all applications installed on VBA Performance Test System to accomplish load balancing performance metrics within each application and database workloads to determine number and volume of transactions being processed does not degrade the VBA Corporate production systems. Maintenance services are required for this software to remain updated with the latest versions through downloads from the vendor which provide patches and updates to the software suite. Also, the ability to contact the vendor's help desk for support is necessary for troubleshooting issues which arise as a result of software usage issues. The total estimated price of the proposed action, inclusive of the option periods, is. 4.Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting this exception to fair opportunity is 41 U.S.C. 253(j)(b) as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) FAR Subpart 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(B), "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.Reason for Authority Cited: Based on extensive market research, as described in paragraph 8 of this document, it was determined that limited competition is available for these brand name items and services. Only HP brand name software license subscriptions can meet all of the Government's interoperability and compatibility requirements. Specifically, if another brand name software product was acquired, the following level of effort for both Government and contractor resources would be required. An extensive rewrite of all existing application test scripts would be required to work with any other brand name software, which amounts to approximately 175 application scripts. These existing applications only work with the aforementioned HP brand name software. The Government estimates a maximum of three (3) years would be required to accomplish this based on historical data from previous application script development efforts. Additionally, the aforementioned HP brand name software works with the VBA online transaction software called Tuxedo. The Veterans claims processing IT platform is solely based on the Tuxedo online transaction processing software and is a critical component in meeting VA's needs. Furthermore, another brand name software product would cause additional impacts to the VBA Performance Test System supporting application validation, performance load testing, and pre-production release to the VBA Corporate System, which would create major delays in current application release scheduling. The existing contract award supporting the VBA Performance Test System would require additional resources to prepare new application scripting; execute testing, analysis, and validation that the new software toolset and new scripts accomplish existing functionality that HP brand name software currently provides. Only HP brand name software can meet all of VA's requirements detailed above. Additionally, only HP or an authorized reseller can provide maintenance services for the aforementioned software. Any source would require access to HP's proprietary data to provide the maintenance services. 6.Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in the market research section of this document. Limited competition is anticipated for the required brand name items and maintenance. Furthermore, in accordance with FAR 5.3, the contract award will be synopsized on the Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) Page. In addition, this Justification and Approval (J&A) will be made publicly available on the FBO page. 7.Actions to Increase Competition: Although the Government is limiting competition as a result of specifying a brand name item, there are multiple authorized resellers of the required products on the NASA SEWP IV GWAC. Limited competition for this requirement among these vendors is anticipated. Additionally, this J&A and Request for Quoation will be submitted to all four NASA SEWP IV GWAC groups in order to fully notify all interested parties. Any quotations received will be evaluated. Furthermore, in order to remove or overcome barriers to competition in future acquisitions for this requirement, the agency will work with the program office to perform additional market research in a timely manner so that other solutions can be considered. 8.Market Research: Market research was conducted by VA through the issuance of a Request for Information (RFI) on the NASA SEWP IV GWAC for only the brand name requested. Three contract holders responded to the RFI, showing their ability to provide the required software license subscriptions and maintenance services. Based on this market research, limited competition is expected for this proposed action. Additional market research was conducted in July 2011, by the VBA Performance Test System team. The VBA Performance Test System team reviewed similar software in the market place to determine if that software could provide the level of full load balancing, application/integration testing and capacity planning analysis VA requires. The products reviewed were OPNET Application Platform Compatibility and Computer Associates (CA) Application Performance Management (APM) solution. OPNET Application Platform Compatibility provides software toolsets for application monitoring for system configurations such as VBA Performance Test; however, this product does not integrate with Tuxedo 8.0; therefore, this product would not be applicable for VA's Veterans claims processing IT platform which is solely based on the Tuxedo online transaction processing. Additionally the OPNET Application Platform Compatibility software would not be interoperable and compatible with currently used applications without an extensive rewrite of all existing application test scripts. The CA APM solution enables performance testing and production monitoring of applications across physical, virtual and cloud systems that can assist organizations in delivering business services, software titled Application/Platform Compatibility software testing suite. However, in reviewing the documentation of this product suite, the software is primarily geared to cloud computing, which does not support our existing VBA applications. Therefore this other brand name software would also not be interoperable and compatible with currently used applications without an extensive rewrite of all existing application test scripts. The VBA Corporate System and mirrored imaged VBA Performance Test System is an open-client tiered architecture; mainframe to server to desktop configuration and only the aforementioned HP brand name software can operate in that environment while meeting all of VA's requirements. Based on this market research, the VBA Performance Test System team concluded only HP brand name software can meet all of VA's needs. 9.Other Facts: In Fiscal Year (FY) 04, the IBM Rational Test Suite of software was procured in the establishment of the VBA Performance Test System for load generation, identifying application development code fixes/bugs, integration application testing and application load balancing. This software provided limited results in identifying all potential application bottlenecks reading and updating the corporate database in a simulated environment. The IBM Rational software was also limited in the version control supporting the VBA online transaction software Tuxedo 6.0. During early FY06 the VBA Corporate System Tuxedo online transaction processing software was upgraded to release 8.0 and Rational Test Suite, which was not supported by vendor under this release. Other product suites such as AppLoader by NRG Global, OpenSTA by Open System Testing Architecture and LoadRunner by HP were evaluated. Based on performance metrics, the HP suite was selected as the best product suite to simulate VBA corporate production systems end user baseline of over 15,000 users. In early FY06, a software award was made to acquire the HP test suite. Additional HP brand name products have been acquired supporting the build-out of various IT applications supporting VBA VETSNET since that time. As the VBA end-user base has increased from 15,000 users to over 30,000, additional virtual load testing software was acquired to mirror the simulated workload performed at the VBA regional offices that submit thousands of transactions to the Corporate System. The procurements listed below were awarded by VA through limited competition for HP brand name products against the NASA SEWP GWAC: FY06 Contract Obligation Number 101-Y64012 - - GTSI Corp FY07 Contract Obligation Number 101-J74075 - - Spectrum Systems FY07 Contract Obligation Number 101-Y72011 - - GTSI Corp FY08 Contract Obligation Number 101-8V2095 - - GTSI Corp FY09 Contract Obligation Number 200-J02102 - - Alvarez & Associates
 

Web Link

FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/notices/e0dc0c281cdc0083edb01662572a979d)
 

Document(s)

Attachment
 

File Name: NNG07DA46B VA118A-11-F-0136 NNG07DA46B VA118A-11-F-0136.docx (https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=259817&FileName=NNG07DA46B-002.docx)

Link: https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=259817&FileName=NNG07DA46B-002.docx

 

Note: If links are broken, refer to Point of Contact above or contact the FBO Help Desk at 877-472-3779.
 

Record

SN02584224-W 20110922/110920235505-e0dc0c281cdc0083edb01662572a979d (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)

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