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FBO DAILY - FEDBIZOPPS ISSUE OF JUNE 08, 2016 FBO #5311
DOCUMENT

R -- Dell Change Auditor Licenses - Attachment

Notice Date

6/6/2016
 

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

VA11816Q1084
 

Archive Date

9/10/2016
 

Point of Contact

Joseph Pignataro, Joseph.Pignataro@va.gov
 

Small Business Set-Aside

N/A
 

Award Number

NNG15SD22B VA118-16-F-1087
 

Award Date

6/3/2016
 

Awardee

FOUR POINTS TECHNOLOGY, L.L.C.;14900 CONFERENCE CENTER DR STE 100;CHANTILLY;VA;20151
 

Award Amount

$227,704.50
 

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 issued under the National Aeronautics Space Administration (NASA) Solutions for Enterprise Wide Procurement (SEWP) V Governmentwide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) for Dell ChangeAuditor software licenses which includes twelve months of maintenance. 3. Description of the Supplies or Services: VA, Office of Information and Technology (OI&T), Service Delivery and Engineering, Enterprise Systems Engineering has a requirement to procure an additional 25,050 Dell ChangeAuditor software licenses to support the Microsoft Active Directory (AD) environment managed in VA domain controller hardware. VA is required, upon request, to provide information to the Office of Inspector General (OIG) to aid in audits and investigations. Information is gathered, in part, by using the Dell ChangeAuditor software in conjunction with the Microsoft AD. VA has a requirement to increase the license count for its existing license install base. VA currently owns 400,000 licenses of Dell ChangeAuditor for Active Directory (part number QCA-NPO-PB) and other products will not interoperate properly with the VA's current infrastructure. Therefore an increased quantity of 25,050 is required. The software licenses are installed on servers within the VA enterprise supporting Microsoft AD. Dell ChangeAuditor for AD is an auditing tool that tracks, reports and provides alerts of configuration changes to the Microsoft AD in real time. This information is used to comply with auditing requirements and that information would not otherwise be available if using other software tools. Without purchasing additional licenses of the existing Dell ChangeAuditor software, or providing maintenance support for the existing licenses, VA will not meet OI&T auditing requirements or be positioned to provide critical information when requested by the OIG. Required maintenance support includes software upgrades, troubleshooting, break-fix repair and technical support. The maintenance ensures the software remains operational throughout its use. The period of performance shall be 12 months from date of contract award. The total estimated price for the proposed action is 4. Statutory Authority: The statutory authority permitting an exception to fair opportunity is 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: Dell or its authorized resellers are the only sources that can provide the required licenses and maintenance requirements for Dell ChangeAuditor for AD software. No other source is capable of providing the required licenses, as only Dell or its authorized resellers possess the proprietary technical data for the ChangeAuditor software. This technical data allows source code level access to the fundamental elements of the software which is essential for technical support, software version control, and updates. VA has over 400,000 Dell ChangeAuditor for AD software licenses, and it is critical to OI&T that the aforementioned software licenses are maintained and updated. ChangeAuditor does correlation between the change and the user granting or removing privileges in which other built-in or VA owned tools do not provide. Failure to acquire additional licenses would prevent the required monitoring, auditing and reporting on events in the AD. Additionally, no other brand of software would be able to interoperate with the current installation base which is comprised of Dell ChangeAuditor for AD software. Due to the Dell proprietary source code that is required to interoperate with the existing ChangeAuditor infrastructure and install base, no other software product is interoperable or compatible with the currently fielded ChangeAuditor infrastructure. Specifically, software, other than the Dell ChangeAuditor software, would not communicate with the existing infrastructure, which is critical to meet VA's needs. Likewise, VA has functional requirements that no other brand name software can meet other than the Dell ChangeAuditor Software. Specifically, VA requires that the auditing software provide database archiving. No other auditing software can provide this functionality. Additionally, VA has a requirement that any auditing software used in its current infrastructure block access to the windows security logs to any individual without privileges to those logs. No other software can provide this functionality. There are other AD auditing software products which were looked into and tested (AD Audit and Netwrix), however, these products/companies had defiencies. Both software's relied heavily on built-in Windows security logs which unacceptably permit any users with admin privileges to clear the logs. Accordingly, VA will not have sufficient data to provide audit reports for objects that have been deleted/modified and changes for user account or group, etc. Next, neither vendor's software supported database archiving which is required per VA 6500 compliance. Only Dell Change Auditor supports this option. Dell ChangeAuditor collects and stores data locally before all logs are shipped to the central database, where as other vendors collect Windows and application logs to monitor AD. 6. Efforts to Obtain Competition: Market research was conducted, details of which are in the market research section of this document. In accordance with FAR 5.301 and 16.505(b)(2)(ii)(D) the resulting contract award will be announced on the Federal Business Opportunities Page and this Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity will be made publicly available. In addition, this Justification for an Exception to Fair Opportunity will be posted on the NASA SEWP V website with the solicitation. 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 perform market research to determine if there are any new products or maintenance services available that will enable future requirements to be competed. 8. Market Research: Market research was conducted in March 2016 to determine whether any other source can provide the software or maintenance support for the existing Dell ChangeAuditor licenses required to meet the Government's need. The Government's technical experts researched maintenance support service plans and software offered by similar providers such as Manage Engine (AdAudit Plus), Netwrix (AD Auditor), and BeyondTrust (AD Auditing) to see if any were capable of meeting the Government's software functional requirements. Market research determined that although these companies and their software products could provide similar maintenance support for their competing products, they could not access proprietary Dell ChangeAuditor for AD software required to provide the necessary maintenance services. Only Dell and its authorized resellers have access to the proprietary technical data for the existing Dell ChangeAuditor perpetual licenses to provide maintenance and support the AD environment. In addition, the Government's technical experts reviewed similar software from Manage Engine (AdAudit Plus), Netwrix (AD Auditor), and BeyondTrust (AD Auditing). After reviewing these other software products, the Government's technical experts determined that none of these items could meet VA's need due to the interoperability and compatibility requirements discussed in paragraph 5 of this justification. ChangeAuditor tracks and audits events without the Windows event IDs and stores all information within its own separate database unlike any other product currently on the market. This allows VA to comply with all the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), Federal Information Security Management Act, and National Institute of Standards and Technology 800-53 revision 4. This review was conducted in March 2016 and the results of which confirms that no other software can meet VA's functional requirements; specifically database archiving and security log access as discussed in paragraph five of this justification and provide the maintenance 9. Other Facts: None.
 

Web Link

FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/notices/b04d388b748cf3142ccc48d03038ae9f)
 

Document(s)

Attachment
 

File Name: NNG15SD22B VA118-16-F-1087 NNG15SD22B VA118-16-F-1087_1.docx (https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=2779243&FileName=NNG15SD22B-023.docx)

Link: https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=2779243&FileName=NNG15SD22B-023.docx

 

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

Record

SN04140006-W 20160608/160606234851-b04d388b748cf3142ccc48d03038ae9f (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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