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FBO DAILY - FEDBIZOPPS ISSUE OF JULY 21, 2016 FBO #5354
DOCUMENT

D -- TAC-16-34494_Personal Identification Verification (PIV) F5 BIG-IP Load Balancers Hardware Augmentation - Attachment

Notice Date

7/19/2016
 

Notice Type

Attachment
 

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

NNG15SD27BVA11816F1206
 

Archive Date

10/16/2016
 

Point of Contact

Tinamarie Giraud, Contract Specialist
 

Small Business Set-Aside

N/A
 

Award Number

NNG15SD27B VA118-16-F-1206
 

Award Date

7/18/2016
 

Awardee

V3GATE, LLC;6060 HOLLOW TREE COURT;COLORADO SPRINGS;CO;80918
 

Award Amount

$397,995.28
 

Description

JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY 1.Contracting Activity:Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Acquisition Operations Technology Acquisition Center (TAC) 23Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07724 2.Description of Action: This proposed action is for a firm fixed price task order to be issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) IV Government Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for brand name F5 Networks hardware, hardware maintenance support, software licenses and installation support. 3.Description of Supplies or Services: The proposed action is to provide VA Office of Information and Technology, Personal Identity Verification (PIV) Program, four brand name F5 Networks BIG-IP 5250v series hardware and six F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition (VE) load balancers with extended hardware maintenance support, six software licenses and installation support for the lifecycle refreshment of the PIV F5 BIG-IP infrastructure. The existing PIV F5 BIG-IP 6400 and 6900 load balancer hardware are near their end of life, end of sale, and end of support in the VA PIV Production environment located at Martinsburg, West Virginia and the PIV Disaster Recovery environment located at Hines, Illinois. The Virtual Edition series hardware will be used in PIV non-production environments to test and evaluate updates and upgrades to the F5 infrastructure and the PIV System. F5 network products provide traffic management on local and global levels across the VA enterprise network. This procurement expands and refreshes existing F5 BIG-IP infrastructures in PIV environments. All PIV's legacy F5 BIG-IP hardware on VA networks must be migrated to supported platforms before December 2016, which is the F5 maintenance support expiration date. The hardware maintenance support consists of 24/7 telephone and email support, hardware updates, patches and defect support, including maintenance coverage to repair or replace system equipment components that restore full operation and accessibility within 48 hours. F5 products without maintenance support cannot receive new software patches and essential vulnerability updates which poses a significant security threat to the VA PIV systems and data. Legacy F5 BIG-IP hardware can significantly reduce efficiency and pose unnecessary risks to PIV's operations. Therefore, this effort is necessary to sustain PIV operations and ensure optimum PIV service delivery. All hardware, software and accessories shall be delivered 30 days after receipt of order and installation shall be performed within 60 calendar days of delivery. Maintenance support will commence upon Government acceptance of hardware and software for a period of 12 months 4. Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting this exception to fair opportunity is Section 41 U.S.C. 4106(c)(2) as implemented by the 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 extensive market research, as described in Section 8 of this Justification, it was determined that limited competition is viable among authorized resellers for the brand name F5 Networks hardware, hardware maintenance support, software licenses and installation support. The current PIV program integrates/interoperates with existing VA owned F5 Networks infrastructures and requires compatibility with existing infrastructure protocols and functionality for continued operational availability. Only F5 Networks load balancer hardware and software licenses are compatible with VA's existing integrated solution currently in place. Therefore, only F5 Networks or an authorized reseller can provide the required hardware and software because only F5 Networks load balancers include the necessary proprietary technology/source code required to work with VA's existing F5 Networks BIG-IP infrastructure. Specifically, the F5 Networks devices communicate using source code that is based on F5 proprietary firmware data. No other software can provide this communication capability without the F5 Networks source code. The use of any other load balancers will severely degrade the ability to support and manage the existing F5 capability which will result in interoperability and compatibility issues. Any load balancer solution from other vendors would require extensive and complex redesign, development and integration of a new VA enterprise-wide load balancer solution. Additionally, any alternate solution from any other vendor would require redeveloping a proprietary load balancer infrastructure working through the cradle-to grave system development life cycle for the PIV program. VA technical experts estimate that the cost of re-developing and switching to an alternate solution would exceed $15 million in duplicated costs, not including the cost of training and annual maintenance support subscription. This is based on previous efforts. Additionally, VA requires hardware maintenance support to include 24/7 telephone and email support, hardware updates, patches and defect support including maintenance coverage to repair or replace system equipment components that restore full operation and accessibility within 48 hours. Only F5 Networks or an authorized reseller can provide the necessary hardware updates, patches and defect support, because of the proprietary source code required to develop and implement software updates. Also only F5 Networks or an authorized reseller can provide the required services since access to the code is required to ensure the hardware and software is properly configured. No other source is capable of providing the required services that meets VA's unique functional requirements. 6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in the market research section of this document. It was determined that limited competition is viable among authorized resellers for this brand name hardware maintenance. In accordance with FAR 5.301 and 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), this action will be synopsized on the Federal Business Opportunities Page and the Justification will be made publicly available within 14 days after award. Additionally, in accordance with FAR 16.505(a)(4)(iii)(A) this Justification will be submitted to all applicable NASA SEWP 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 conduct market research to identify vendors that are able to provide plug and play architecture to use alternate load balancers to seamlessly integrate into exiting PIV system to ascertain if there are changes in the marketplace that would enable future actions be competed. 8. Market Research: The Government's technical experts conducted market research in January 2016 via internet research and reviewing industry publications to ascertain if there are other load balancer manufacturers capable of providing similar F5 BIG-IP capabilities that meet VA requirements. The market research revealed that Cisco, Citrix, Barracuda, Kemp Technologies, Hewlett-Packard, International Business Machines, Ecessa, Coyota and Array offer similar traffic management products for large internal/external regionally distributed networks; however, these manufactures cannot meet VA's needs as their products and designs could not augment or integrate with the existing VA F5 infrastructure. The current F5 Networks load balancers are uniquely integrated into PIV environment's infrastructure with F5 proprietary software and firmware. Only the F5 Networks load balancers can provide interoperability and compatibility with the current PIV System infrastructure. The current PIV System is the System of Systems (SoS) consists of several subsystems integrated together and it interfaces with is and interoperable/compatible with only F5 Networks load balancer solution due to proprietary F5 software source code which is compatible with the existing VA PIV integrated SoS. No other load balancers, other than F5 Networks load balancer, can replace the existing F5 integrated infrastructure within the PIV System without a complete redesign of integrated PIV system. Any alternate solution from another vendor would be a cost prohibitive and high risk alternative as it would require redeveloping a PIV solution working through a cradle-to-grave software development life cycle with any new Load balancers software and hardware solution. In addition, it will take a year to complete the redesign and integration which would require a substantial dollar amount of new investment. The current system would still need to be up and available while redesigning the new system resulting in unnecessary duplication of costs and possible system downtime and/or loss or degradation of data as the PIV system migrates to any alternative load balancers solution. Based on this market research, VA technical experts determined that only F5 Networks BIG-IP product series can meet all of VA's needs. The TAC conducted additional market research in April 2016 utilizing the Provider Lookup Tool on the NASA SEWP V GWAC website, which found a total of 104 re-sellers, of which 15 were Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) GWAC, contract holders that can provide brand name F5 Networks hardware and associated hardware maintenance. 9. Other Facts: None
 

Web Link

FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/notices/cd889c169d5467437b228ab7615f5ea3)
 

Document(s)

Attachment
 

File Name: NNG15SD27B VA118-16-F-1206 NNG15SD27B VA118-16-F-1206.docx (https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=2882323&FileName=NNG15SD27B-020.docx)

Link: https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=2882323&FileName=NNG15SD27B-020.docx

 

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

Record

SN04188713-W 20160721/160719235600-cd889c169d5467437b228ab7615f5ea3 (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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