DA01--BISL Core Services-SAS Software Maintenance

3 of 3 SAS Software Maintenance Control Number: LIMITED-SOURCES JUSTIFICATION 1. Contracting Activity: Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Procurement, Acquisition, and Logistics Technology Acquisition Center 23 Christopher Way Eatontown, New Jersey 07724 2. Description of Action: The proposed contract action is for a firm-fixed price delivery order issued on a sole source basis to Executive Information Systems (EIS), Limited Liability Company under contract number 47QTCA18D0081 on the General Services Administration (GSA) Multiple Award Schedule, for Statistical Analytical Services (SAS) software license renewals and maintenance support for the VA Informatics and Computing Infrastructure (VINCI) environment in support of data analysis activities serving the users within VINCI. 3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA, VINCI requires SAS software license renewals and maintenance support. The VINCI program is a partnership between VA Office of Information and Technology

(OI&T) and the Veterans Health Administration Office of Research and Development. VINCI provides the storage and server technologies to securely host suites of medical and clinical research databases integrated from select national data sources. Researchers access the data, along with the tools for reporting and analysis, in a secure, virtual working environment. SAS Grid software products are a core component of the VINCI program mission, which supports over 1,000 research projects and utilizes 100 terabytes of data daily. SAS is the only analytical software that has the enterprise data capabilities to handle VINCI s data requirements. This action will renew existing SAS Grid software licenses and software maintenance support. Maintenance of the existing licenses is required to receive software upgrades and support to include major releases, point releases, service and security releases of applicable software on a quarterly basis, and/or within 48 hours in cases in which a high-risk vulnerability fix becomes available. The Period of Performance for this action is twelve months from June 30, 2021 through June 29, 2022. The total estimated price of the proposed action is . 4. Authority: This acquisition is conducted under the authority of the Multiple-Award Schedule Program. The specific authority providing for a limited source award is Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 8.405-6(a)(1)(i)(B), Only one source is capable of providing the supplies or services required at the level of quality required because the supplies or services are unique or highly specialized. 5. Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: The proposed source for this action is Executive Information Systems (EIS), 6901 Rockledge Drive, Suite 600, Bethesda, Maryland. Based on extensive market research, as described in Section 8 of this justification, it was determined that there is no competition among vendors for the required software licenses renewals and software maintenance as EIS is the sole Government provider of SAS software licenses and maintenance support. SAS software is proprietary in nature and is not released to any other party. Only SAS or its authorized reseller, EIS, have the required access to the source code and other proprietary software data to be able to meet the Government s needs. No other firm has the capability to develop and issue software updates and fixes for SAS software necessary to support existing statistical and analytical requirements without access to SAS proprietary software code. SAS software maintenance will ensure that all support services are performed and properly configured to the VA-owned SAS software which can only be provided by those who have access to the proprietary software code. VA requires SAS brand name software for the following reasons: SAS enables VA researchers to analyze and extract meaningful information from extremely large data sets (up to five terabytes); only SAS has the performance and capability for handling the vast amounts of data required by the VA; and only SAS has sufficient support to ensure the VA has the required availability and reliability of the SAS Grid. While there are currently other software products available that claim to have similar capabilities, the Government has determined that these software products will not meet the Government s needs for data availability, reliability, and product support of the existing SAS licenses. In order for another entity to provide the required maintenance, VA would have to procure an entirely new software solution and replace the existing software infrastructure to install this new solution, and then purchase maintenance for that product. Due to the proprietary nature of the software, no other vendor will have access to the code to provide the patching, bug fixes, and upgrades required. EIS is SAS sole authorized reseller for Version 8 and later of the Software and subsequent maintenance to such government entities. The existing SAS Grid relies on yearly licensing through EIS in order to support researchers and operational staff. For research, SAS grid has 25 million compute minutes per year and 75,000 jobs performed to support veteran care. For operations, SAS Grid provides 18 million compute minutes and 54,000 jobs per year to support executive leadership. The support is vital to maintain the SAS installation so that researchers can use the software to query data to improve Veteran care outcomes. Substituting an equivalent product would render this existing code useless, thereby negatively impacting the research studies using this code and efforts to improve Veteran care. SAS software is proprietary in nature and is not released to any other party. Only SAS or its authorized reseller have the required access to the source code and other proprietary software data to be able to meet the Government s needs. No other firm has the capability to develop and issue software updates and fixes for SAS software necessary to support existing statistical and analytical requirements without access to SAS proprietary software code. SAS software maintenance will ensure that all support services are performed and properly configured to the SAS software which can only be provided by those who have access to the proprietary software code. Only SAS software maintenance will meet the Government s needs for data availability, reliability, and product support of the existing SAS licenses. Since EIS is SAS s sole Government provider, only EIS can provide the maintenance and support that meets the Government s requirements for the renewal of software licenses and maintenance support for existing SAS software. 6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in the market research section of this document. This effort did not yield any additional sources that can meet the Government s requirements. There is no competition anticipated for this acquisition. In accordance with FAR 5.301 and 8.405-6(a)(2) the award notice for this action will be synopsized on the Contract Opportunities website and this 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 marketplace that would enable future actions to be competed. Specifically, the Government will continue to monitor the marketplace to determine whether other brand software could meet VA s requirements or if additional resellers become available. 8. Market Research: Market research was conducted by VA technical experts from VINCI in February 2021. The market research included a thorough review of various websites and trade publications as well as discussions with VA data managers and researchers to ascertain if similar items can meet the Government s requirements. Specifically, VINCI technical experts researched software from Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Stata and R (free software environment for statistical computing and graphics) will not run SAS code, neither will Oracle, nor Informatica. All were carefully researched by examining the web sites and white papers associated with the flagship products. None of these four software packages offer interoperability and code compatibility with the current VINCI platform. Only SAS software meets all the VA s functional needs as described in the previous paragraphs. The four aforementioned software products offer a limited array of analytics and none of the four offers a grid-enabled high-performance computing environment, which is crucial to meeting the Government s requirements. Based on this market research, the Government s technical experts determined that only SAS software can meet all the Government s requirements. EIS is the only authorized reseller of SAS software and maintenance. At the time of the writing of this Justification, there have been no new entrants to the marketplace that can provide these services. VA performed further market research in February 2021, by conducting a search on the GSA e-Library. Market research indicated SAS Institute is the sole manufacturer and publisher of SAS software, and EIS is SAS sole authorized reseller for Version 8 and later of the software and subsequent maintenance to Government entities. Finally, Government representatives received a sole source letter on February 26, 2021 directly from SAS confirming EIS as the sole authorized reseller for SAS software to Government entities. Therefore, this proposed action will be a sole source task order issued under GSA MAS, contract number 47QTCA18D0081. 9. Other Facts: None. 10. Technical and Requirements Certification: I certify that the supporting data under my cognizance, which are included in this justification, are accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief. Date: ______________________ IT Director, VINCI Signature: __________________ 11. Determination of Best Value: I hereby determine that the proposed contract action will represent the best value to the Government consistent with FAR 8.404(d). GSA has already determined that the prices on the FSS contract are fair and reasonable. Additionally, price discounts will be sought. Finally, the quote will be compared to the Independent Government Cost Estimate. Date: ______________________ Procuring Contracting Officer Signature: __________________ 12. Procuring Contracting Officer Certification: I certify that this justification is accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and belief. As this contract action exceeds the simplified acquisition threshold, but does not exceed $750,000, the certification required by FAR 8.405-6(d)(1) serves as approval. Date: ______________________ Procuring Contracting Officer Signature: __________________