Attachment 1 - Policy Alert 08-10 Revision 2 JA template ...



JUSTIFICATION AND APPROVAL FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY1. Contracting Activity:Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Acquisition Operations Technology Acquisition Center 260 Industrial Way West Eatontown, NJ 07724 2. 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) IV Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC). The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Information Technology (OIT) Network Security Operations Center (NSOC) requires a base plus two option years of brand name, SolarWinds Orion Software licenses, maintenance and support in support of the National Network Monitoring Program. 3. Description of the Supplies or Services: The required software maintenance, licenses, and support shall provide continued access to product updates including major enhancements, new features and bug fixes, as well as 24/7 technical support via phone and email. Support shall also include access to download available additional product components to extend the functionality of licensed products. The SolarWinds Orion software is used to monitor and manage the VA network and system server elements and provides for redundancy, core fault reporting, and remediation processing for consolidated management of network systems. The period of performance is from August 25, 2013 through August 24, 2014, with two, 12-month option periods. The following list are the products with associated required start and end dates. QuantityProductSKUCurrent Expiration DateLicense Period1Kiwi CatTools - Full Install300048574Sep 28, 2013331 days (expires August 24, 2014)1Kiwi Log Viewer v2 - Single install300052098Sep 28, 2013331 days (expires August 24, 2014)1Kiwi Syslog Server v9 - Single Install300052056Aug 25, 20131 year (expires August 24, 2014)1Kiwi Syslog Server v9 - Single Install300052056Sep 28, 2013331 days (expires August 24, 2014)4Orion Additional Polling Engine16020Aug 25, 20131 year (expires August 24, 2014)1Orion Additional Polling Engine16020Sep 13, 2013346 days (expires August 24, 2014)1Orion Additional Web Server1238Aug 25, 20131 year (expires August 24, 2014)1Orion Enterprise Operations Console v1 3901Aug 25, 20131 year (expires August 24, 2014)1Orion Enterprise Operations Console v13901Sep 13, 2013346 days (expires August 24, 2014)1Orion Enterprise Operations Console v13901Sep 28, 2013331 days (expires August 24, 2014)1Orion Failover Engine v6 - P36532Aug 25, 20131 year (expires August 24, 2014)2Orion Failover Engine v6 - P36532Sep 13, 2013346 days (expires August 24, 2014)1Orion IP Address Manager v3 - IP10006004Sep 28, 2013331 days (expires August 24, 2014)1Orion IP Address Manager v3 - IPX6007Aug 25, 20131 year (expires August 24, 2014)1Orion IP Address Manager v3 - IPX6007Sep 28, 2013331 days (expires August 24, 2014)1Orion Netflow Traffic Analyzer v3- SLX3060Sep 23, 2013326 Days (expires August 24, 2014)1Orion Netflow Traffic Analyzer v3- SLX3060Sep 28, 2013331 days (expires August 24, 2014)2Orion Network Configuration Manager v7 - DL300016015Sep 13, 2013346 days (expires August 24, 2014)1Orion Network Configuration Manager v7 - DL5016010Sep 28, 2013331 days (expires August 24, 2014)1Orion Network Configuration Manager v7 - DLX16016Sep 13, 2013346 days (expires August 24, 2014)1Orion Network Performance Monitor SL10016000Sep 28, 2013331 days (expires August 24, 2014)2Orion Network Performance Monitor SLX16004Sep 13, 2013346 days (expires August 24, 2014)1Server & Amp; Application Monitor v5 - AL1504809Sep 28, 2013331 days (expires August 24, 2014)2Server & Amp; Application Monitor v5 - ALX4815Sep 13, 2013346 days (expires August 24, 2014) 21SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset v103003Sep 13, 2013346 days (expires August 24, 2014)1SolarWinds Engineer's Toolset v103003Sep 28, 2013331 days (expires August 24, 2014)1VoIP and Network Quality Manager - SLA54363Sep 28, 2013331 days (expires August 24, 2014)1VoIP and Network Quality Manager - SLAX4366Aug 25, 20131 year (expires August 24, 2014)1VoIP and Network Quality Manager - SLAX4366Sep 28, 2013331 days (expires August 24, 2014) 4. Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting an exception to fair opportunity is Section 41 U.S.C. 4106(c) as implemented by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (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”.5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: This is a brand name justification in support of FAR 11.105, Items Peculiar to One Manufacturer. SolarWinds Orion brand name software is the only software that can continue to build upon VA’s existing SolarWinds Orion-based network monitoring system. Any other brand name software is unable to integrate with the currently fielded software and SolarWinds Orion-based network monitoring system. Additionally, no other brand name software will be interoperable or compatible with the currently fielded SolarWinds Orion-based network monitoring system and SolarWinds Orion brand name software. Specifically, the current system and software communicates through a source code that is based on SolarWinds Orion proprietary data. No other software can provide this communication capability without this source code. Existing SolarWinds Orion brand name software inventory includes existing ownership of over 4,300 existing SolarWinds Orion-related licenses spread over 165 line item categories, totally over $2,000,000 in assets. In addition to the Enterprise Network Monitoring (ENM) initiative, this software is needed to support the VA’s Information Technology (IT) visibility to the Network initiative.? Visibility is another VA Chief Information Officer (CIO)-sponsored program to share status’ (software, patches, vulnerabilities, up/down status, etc) among VA network devices and to report upstream and to aggregate localized data to the SolarWinds Orion operations console product.? Specifically, only SolarWinds Orion brand name software can provide upstream forwarding of localized data into the existing federated SolarWinds Orion architecture.? The upstream of data is critical to produce a single view collective status of all security related activity over the network.? This will ultimately provide VA OIT a single interactive view that displays the monitored VA enterprise network’s health and security posture of all network elements. Furthermore, any other brand name software cannot accomplish this because another product cannot communicate, nor integrate with the database of, the federated Enterprise Operations Console, which is the dashboard component of the ENM initiative, and thus will not allow security visibility.? Additionally, data monitored and provided by another vendor will not integrate with the existing toolset, which is based on SolarWinds Orion brand name software.6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in the market research section of this document. Although the Government is limiting competition as a result of specifying a brand name, there are multiple authorized resellers of the brand name supplies on the NASA SEWP IV GWAC. In accordance with FAR 5.301 and 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), this action will be synopsized at award on the Federal Business Opportunities Page. 7. 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 perform additional market research in a timely manner so that other solutions can be considered. 8. Market Research: The Government’s technical experts conducted market research. This market research is an ongoing process starting in 2009 and continuously being conducted. The similar software reviewed included Hewlett Packard (HP) OpenView (the product used by VA prior to Orion), WhatsUp Gold, and Cisco Works. Based on reviews of these products, the Government’s technical experts determined that none of these products can meet the Government’s interoperability and compatibility requirements previously discussed.? Additionally, none of these other products can offer the upstream forwarding of localized data into the existing federated SolarWinds Orion architecture, which is critical in producing a single view collective status of all security related activity over the network.? Review of these products is based on actual VA experience using the competing monitoring software. 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. Based on all of these market research efforts, it has been determined that only SolarWinds maintenance can be used for Solar Winds products as SolarWinds is the only supplier of software updates (to include all version updates and bug fixes) and technical support. Additionally, market research was conducted utililizing the NASA SEWP IV Manufacturer Lookup tool, and it was determined that there are 32 resellers of SolarWinds products, including six in Group A, five resellers within Group B (service disabled Veteran-owned small businesses (SDVOSBs)), eight resellers in Group C (small business), and eight resellers in Group D. Based on this, there is reasonable expectation that sufficient competition exists in Group B. Therefore, the Request for Quote will be submitted to all vendors in Groups B and competition is expected for this procurement.9. Other Facts: N/A ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download