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FBO DAILY - FEDBIZOPPS ISSUE OF SEPTEMBER 24, 2014 FBO #4687
DOCUMENT

70 -- Cisco Network Expansion - Attachment

Notice Date

9/22/2014
 

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

VA11814Q0603
 

Archive Date

12/26/2014
 

Point of Contact

Mark.Mezger@va.gov
 

E-Mail Address

jessica.adamitis@va.gov
(jessica.adamitis@va.gov)
 

Small Business Set-Aside

N/A
 

Award Number

NNG07DA19B VA118-14-F-0530
 

Award Date

9/18/2014
 

Awardee

AFFIGENT, LLC;13873 PARK CENTER RD STE 127;HERNDON;VA;201713248
 

Award Amount

$4,239,975.06
 

Description

JUSTIFICATION AND APPROVAL FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY 1.Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Acquisition Operations Technology Acquisition Center-Eatontown 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, NJ 07724 2.Description of Action: This proposed action is for a firm-fixed price (FFP) delivery order for Cisco Nexus 7000 brand name switch sub-components and 12 months of associated Cisco SMARTnet maintenance support for the expansion of the existing Point of Delivery (POD) architecture. The solicitation will be issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) IV Government Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC). Delivery is required within 30 days after receipt of order. 3.Description of Supplies or Services: VA Office of Information & Technology (OI&T), Service Delivery and Engineering Enterprise Operations (EO) requires an expansion of the existing POD network architecture in order to support the greater data throughput across data centers. The data centers that require this expansion are the Austin Information Technology Center (ITC), Philadelphia ITC, Hines ITC, and the Capital Region Recovery Center in Falling Waters, WV. This Cisco subcomponents being sought will support increased network bandwidth on a scalable basis. The Cisco Nexus 7000 Switches comprise a modular data center-class product line designed for highly scalable 10 Gigabit Ethernet networks with a fabric architecture that scales beyond 15 terabits per second. They are designed to meet the requirements of the most mission-critical data centers, deliver continuous system operation and virtualized, pervasive services. The expansion of the POD architecture is necessary to support VA Local Area Network (LAN) and Wide Area Network (WAN) environments by allowing quicker and more efficient routing and switching. The POD architecture supports various VA applications to include the Benefit Delivery Network, multiple virtualization platforms, and development and test environments. The applications supported are used both directly and indirectly by millions of veterans on a daily basis. This purchase is for hardware, software, and hardware maintenance. All equipment will be installed, configured, and tested by EO personnel. The total estimated price of the proposed action is $4,800,897. 4.Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting this exception to fair opportunity is 41 U.S.C.4106(c)(2) as implemented by 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. Based on extensive market research, as described in paragraph 8 of this document, it was determined that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for these brand name items and services. Existing VA OI&T enterprise management tools, hardware maintenance, security update tools and processes, auditing tools, and asset management of WAN, datacenter and facility LAN equipment are designed to support existing systems and infrastructure, which are based upon use of the Cisco platform of equipment, protocols and functionality. VA requires a solution compatible with existing infrastructure protocols and functionality for continued operational availability. Cisco products are developed with the ever-changing needs of the end user in mind. As enterprise data centers require greater capacity and throughput, the ability to replace modular components with newer technologies while maintaining the bulk of the existing chassis hardware directly results in less network downtime and lower costs. By allowing the use of pluggable modules, network architects have the ability to incrementally upgrade the networks that they manage without the requirement of replacing 100% of the network focal point requiring the upgrade. Due to the modular design of the components meant to fit directly into an existing Cisco chassis, modular components offered by other Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) are not interoperable with existing equipment. The Cisco Nexus 7000 Supervisor Modules being sought scale the control-plane and data-plane services for the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switches in scalable data center networks. The Cisco Nexus 7000 Supervisor Modules are designed to deliver scalable control-plane and management functions for the Cisco Nexus 7000 chassis, which are currently in place within VA data centers. The supervisor controls the Layer 2 switching and Layer 3 routing services, redundancy capabilities, configuration management, status monitoring, power and environmental management, and more. It provides centralized arbitration to the system fabric for all line cards. The fully distributed forwarding architecture allows the supervisor to support transparent upgrades to I/O and fabric modules with greater forwarding capacity. In addition, the Cisco Nexus 7000 Fabric-2 Modules for the Cisco Nexus 7000 chassis are separate fabric modules that provide parallel fabric channels to each I/O and supervisor module slot. Up to five simultaneously active fabric modules work together delivering up to 550 gigabytes per second per slot. The Cisco modules being procured under this brand name justification are proprietary in nature and are not compatible with other vendors' hardware. They are explicitly designed to fit existing Cisco chassis and allow for network expandability. Within VA data centers, multiple manufacturers' products exist to include devices from Brocade, Juniper, Hewlett Packard (HP), and Dell. Full replacement of the Cisco routers and switches currently in operation with those from another OEM rather than the modular replacement of necessary components would result in extensive network outages and an unnecessary duplication of costs. It is estimated that the time to replace all affected equipment is 600 hours. The time estimate is based on the time required to build equipment compatible with the Trade Agreement Act of 1979, remove existing equipment, the installation of new equipment, and the configuration of all new equipment. The modular Cisco components being procured allow for an incremental cost to increase the functionality of the existing equipment rather than a full replacement cost. The modular components offered by Cisco competitors do not provide for interoperability with existing Cisco hardware due to both physical restrictions and the proprietary nature of the Cisco Internal Operating System (IOS). The full replacement cost is therefore estimated to be approximately $15,000,000 across all affected data centers, which would not be recovered through a full and open competition. 6.Efforts to Obtain Competition: Limited competition is anticipated among authorized resellers for this brand name requirement. In accordance with FAR 5.301 and 16.505(b)(2), this action will be synopsized at award on the Federal Business Opportunities Page and the justification will be made publicly available. Although the Government is limiting competition as a result of specifying brand name products and services, there are multiple authorized resellers of these products and services on the NASA SEWP IV GWAC. 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 continue to perform market research to consider and ascertain if any other sources can provide these services in the future. 8.Market Research: Beginning in May of 2014, the Government's technical experts have reviewed product lines of other OEMs offering products with similar functionalities. Specifically, Dell, Juniper, Brocade, and HP were researched. As previously mentioned, each of these OEMs is currently represented inside of VA data centers and are providing various network functions. While each of these OEMs offer full routers and switches at levels necessary to support current and future VA network bandwidth, they do not offer modular components that are interoperable with existing Cisco hardware as a part of this POD expansion. The fabric modules and supervisor modules being sought under this procurement are only compatible with existing Cisco hardware. In addition the continued use of Cisco's IOS is required for system stability, security, and overall network interoperability. During July 2014, Government representatives conducted market research via the NASA SEWP IV GWAC, utilizing the manufacturer lookup tool to identify potential sources that can provide Cisco equipment. The manufacturer lookup tool yielded 38 resellers of Cisco products. There is reasonable expectation that limited competition exits on the NASA SEWP IV GWAC for Cisco equipment. 9.Other Facts: N/A
 

Web Link

FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/notices/c63ecc70f2526248f6bd72e374ceda8d)
 

Document(s)

Attachment
 

File Name: NNG07DA19B VA118-14-F-0530 NNG07DA19B VA118-14-F-0530_1.docx (https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=1645724&FileName=NNG07DA19B-031.docx)

Link: https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=1645724&FileName=NNG07DA19B-031.docx

 

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

Record

SN03523288-W 20140924/140923000721-c63ecc70f2526248f6bd72e374ceda8d (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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