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FBO DAILY - FEDBIZOPPS ISSUE OF SEPTEMBER 28, 2016 FBO #5423
DOCUMENT

99 -- TAC-16-37310 Salesforce Licenses - Attachment

Notice Date

9/26/2016
 

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

VA11816Q1385
 

Archive Date

10/23/2016
 

Point of Contact

Dawn Eimont
 

E-Mail Address

0-9638<br
 

Small Business Set-Aside

N/A
 

Award Number

NNG15SD27B VA118-16-F-1530
 

Award Date

9/23/2016
 

Awardee

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

Award Amount

$2,889,736.00
 

Description

JUSTIFICATION FOR AN EXCEPTION TO FAIR OPPORTUNITY 1.Contracting Activity:Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Acquisition Operations Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, New Jersey 07724 2.Description of Action: The proposed action is for a firm-fixed-price delivery order to be issued under the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for brand name Salesforce licenses with software maintenance and support. 3.Description of the Supplies or Services: VA, Center for Innovation (VACI) has a requirement to renew 331 Salesforce licenses and to upgrade an additional 127,971 Salesforce licenses. These renewals and upgrades also include software patches, updates, helpdesk support and architectural support to sustain and expand VA's Salesforce Application Suite. These brand name Salesforce licenses include: Service Cloud Licenses Unlimited Edition; Service Cloud Licenses with Knowledge Unlimited Edition; Customer Community Licenses; Customer Community Plus Licenses; Live Unlimited Edition; Customer Community Plus; Force.com UE; Force.com Admin; Wave Platform; and Builder and Explorer. Salesforce is a multi-tenant architecture Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) with software delivered via the internet through a subscription service delivery model, commonly referred to as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). VA delivers business functionality through a number of configured applications to key stakeholders including Office of Information Technology (OIT), MyVA, Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and National Cemeteries Administration (NCA) using declarative and Apex coding using Salesforce's Force.com PaaS and a number of SaaS products including Service Cloud Salesforce's Customer Relationship Manager (CRM), Communities and Wave. Additional licenses and support for the solution are required to: expand the functionality of the current applications and their various components, develop new applications and functionality, meet the rigorous security standards of VA including Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), offer an application exchange platform to enable the integration of external software, and provide a closed social network for collaboration. VA requires licenses for the software solution that are cloud-based, self-service, and self-configurable through declarative and Apex coding to adjust to changing demands in functionality. The period of performance for the software maintenance and support shall be September 26, 2016 through September 25, 2017. 4.Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting an 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 and 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 brand name Salesforce licenses, as well as software maintenance and support. Over the last 18 months, VA has developed an open source Application Suite on the proprietary Salesforce platform. In 2015 VA procured 305,686 licenses for the development of 16 applications. VA seeks to upgrade 127,971 of these licenses as the user base is less than anticipated, however the current users require slightly more functionality which these upgrades provide. These applications are shared within the Federal Government and are being adopted within various entities within VA including: Office of the Secretary, MyVA, OIT, VBA, VHA, and NCA. These licenses and related support are needed for each of these entities in order to fully implement the Application Suite. Brand name Salesforce licenses are the only PaaS and SaaS licenses that can be added to this current VA Salesforce Application Suite. No other licenses will be interoperable or compatible with the Salesforce platform or the Salesforce 16 applications already developed. In order to maintain the suite of applications and build out additional functionality to meet ongoing and evolving business processes and requirements, VA requires the renewal of the current licenses, as well as upgraded licenses for new functionality. The use of any other PaaS and SaaS licenses would require the redevelopment of the suite of 16 applications to be built on the new PaaS and SaaS licenses. Salesforce applications use Apex coding, which enables developers to add business logic to most system events, including button clicks, related record updates, and Visualforce pages. Apex coding is proprietary to Salesforce. All functions that are developed in Apex would need to be rewritten in another code, such as Java or Python, which would be a duplication of a significant amount of work already performed successfully. Furthermore, Salesforce is the only provider which includes quarterly automatic upgrades to all current applications without any re-configuration. VA would face ongoing development efforts in order to keep up with these quarterly upgrades. This would add technical development risk and additional costs and resources as ongoing development teams would be required. In addition only Salesforce provides a number of functions that the Government requires. Specifically, Salesforce.com is the only provider of an online directory that allows for the posting and sharing of relevant Government applications which are pre-configured for the Salesforce instance. Applications can be reviewed, rated, test-driven, and installed within minutes. This directory is called the AppExchange. This unique Salesforce delivery model enables all PaaS and SaaS applications to be available quickly and directly through a web browser, with no software to download or hardware to install. This is the most effective strategy for a remote team environment, such as VA. Additionally, Salesforce is the only provider with fully integrated enterprise collaboration capabilities, which increases productivity within organizations and is ideal for information sharing within remote teams. This means that applications with various purposes can leverage capabilities within the suite of Salesforce applications. This reduces duplicative development and limits Dev/Ops efforts. Finally, Salesforce is the only such provider that offers a highly secure environment that is compliant with Federal security guidelines and holds a FedRAMP Moderate Authority to Operate for SaaS and PaaS. Salesforce is also the only provider of the required software maintenance and support. The Salesforce platform is proprietary software and no other vendor has the copyright or license to the software in order to provide necessary patches and updates. For this reason, no other vendor offers helpdesk support for the Salesforce platform. While other vendors may provide Salesforce architectural support, this service is included with the maintenance. 6.Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in section 8 of this justification. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government's requirements. It was determined, however that limited competition is available among authorized resellers for brand name Salesforce licenses, as well as software maintenance and support. In accordance with FAR 16.505(a)(4)(iii)(A)(2), this justification will be provided with the solicitation to all appropriate NASA SEWP V GWAC holders. Furthermore, in accordance with FAR 5.301 and FAR 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D), this action will be synopsized at award on the Federal Business Opportunities website and the justification will be made publicly available within 14 days of award. 7.Actions to Increase Competition: The Government will continue to conduct market research to ascertain if there are changes in the market place that would enable future actions to be competed. Specifically, the Government will continue to monitor the marketplace to determine whether other brand software could integrate into VA's existing suite of Salesforce applications. 8.Market Research: The Government's technical experts conducted market research in May 2016 by reviewing similar SaaS and PaaS software and associated services. Similar products reviewed included SugarCRM, ZohoCRM, GitHub, and Basecamp/Highrise. 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 in Section 5 of this justification. In addition, VA's technical experts also could not find any other sources that could provide the aforementioned software maintenance and support without access to the proprietary technical data for the Salesforce software. Unauthorized software providers do not have access to the proprietary data of the software to be able to provide troubleshooting, updates, fixes, patches, and upgrades. Based on market research, VA technical experts concluded that Salesforce is the only product that can meet the Government's interoperability and compatibility requirements previously discussed. Furthermore, none of these vendors offer quarterly automatic upgrades, an online directory for application sharing, or are FedRAMP Moderate. Furthermore, VA networking Subject Matter Experts regularly review industry trade publications and conduct internet research to ascertain if any capable software is available. Based on all of these market research efforts, the Government's technical experts have determined that only brand name Salesforce licenses and software maintenance and support can meet all of VA's needs. In July 2016, additional market research was also conducted through the use of the Provider Lookup Tool on the NASA SEWP V GWAC web site and identified five Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) (Value Added Resellers (VARs) from Group B(2); and four small business VARs from Group C, that are resellers of brand name Salesforce licenses, as well as software maintenance and support that hold current GWACs. Therefore, limited competition is expected among SDVOSBs for this proposed action. Other Facts: None.
 

Web Link

FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/notices/7f18241a1623026fc0db92ea6cead7ff)
 

Document(s)

Attachment
 

File Name: NNG15SD27B VA118-16-F-1530 NNG15SD27B VA118-16-F-1530_1.docx (https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=3025726&FileName=NNG15SD27B-027.docx)

Link: https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=3025726&FileName=NNG15SD27B-027.docx

 

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

Record

SN04288236-W 20160928/160926235222-7f18241a1623026fc0db92ea6cead7ff (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

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

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