Inactive

The Army has an urgent and compelling need to ensure the continuation of critical commercial cloud hosting services being provided by the incumbent contractor, DCSSP Inc., pending resolution of a pre-... The Army has an urgent and compelling need to ensure the continuation of critical commercial cloud hosting services being provided by the incumbent contractor, DCSSP Inc., pending resolution of a pre-award protest filed with the contracting officer given the circumstances presented below. On 26 September 2018, MICC-Fort Eustis awarded delivery order #W911S018F0256 under the CHESS ACCENT BOA vehicle to DCSSP, Inc. This requirement was awarded using a brand-name requirement for Microsoft Azure. The period of performance for the delivery order was 27 September 2018 through 26 September 2019. On 10 September 2019, MICC-Fort Eustis issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) #298511 under the CHESS ACCENT BOA vehicle for the follow-on requirement. This effort was solicited as a brand-name requirement for Microsoft Azure. The original closing date of the RFP was 18 September 2019. MICC-Fort Eustis issued three amendments to answer industry questions and extended the closing date to 23 September 2019. Before closing date of the RFP, Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) filed a timely pre-award protest with the contracting officer challenging the brand-name requirement for Microsoft Azure. In compliance with FAR 33.103(f), MICC-Fort Eustis is not awarding the follow-on contract pending resolution of the agency-level protest. Furthermore, as stated in FAR 33.103 (g), resolution of this agency protest is expected to occur within 35 days after the date of protest filing. Only the current contractor, DCSSP Inc., can satisfy the continuation effort within the necessary time constraints to avoid a catastrophic lapse in service from Microsoft Azure Cloud Services. The current contractor is the only contractor that can provide the required service level Enterprise Agreement without delay for continued operations so that the four-star command does not experience a lapse in service. TRADOC Cloud Services are crucial to maintaining the effective operation of TRADOC and the Army at large. Mission readiness of the Army's institutional and operational forces will be catastrophically affected if the Cloud Services were to incur a "break" or loss of functionality. There is no other vendor available that can continue to provide uninterrupted support. A contract extension must be awarded to the incumbent on a sole-source basis in the interest of time, economy, and efficiency as it will allow the unabated execution of Cloud Services pending resolution of the agency-level protest.