Inactive

Description of Action: The proposed action is for a firm-fixed price task order for renewal of brand name Compuware software licenses and associated software maintenance. This effort is being conducte... Description of Action: The proposed action is for a firm-fixed price task order for renewal of brand name Compuware software licenses and associated software maintenance. This effort is being conducted under the authority of the Multiple Award Schedule Program; the proposed effort will be awarded under the General Services Administration (GSA) Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) 47QTCA18D0038 to Compuware Corporation (Compuware), 1 Campus Martius, Detroit, Michigan, 48226. Description of Supplies or Services: VA, Office of Information and Technology, Service Delivery and Engineering, Infrastructure Operations (IO) has a requirement for renewal of brand name Compuware software licenses and associated maintenance. Specifically, VA requires renewal of brand name Compuware Abend-Aid, Abend-Aid for CICS, File-Aid, Expediter, and Strobe software licenses and associated maintenance. The software is CPU-id dependent requiring annual license key for continued usage. This software provides critical support for mainframe z/0S systems and applications requiring batch processing. The software maintenance will consist of software upgrades and updates to include major releases, point releases, service releases 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 maintenance is required to ensure the Compuware software in use remains operational. The base period shall be a 12-month period of performance from 10/1/2020 to 9/30/2021 followed by two 12-month option periods. Authority: This acquisition is being conducted under the authority of Multiple-Award Schedule Program. The specific authority providing for a limited source award is Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 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." Rationale Supporting Use of Authority Cited Above: The proposed source for this action is Compuware Corporation, 1 Campus Martius, Detroit, Michigan, 48226. 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 Compuware does not allow resellers to resell Compuware software or maintenance. Only Compuware software and associated maintenance can meet all of the Government's requirements. Specifically, VA requires brand name Compuware software because only brand name Compuware software can meet VA’s functional requirement to enable VA researchers to send and receive meaningful information from extremely large data sets up to five terabytes. VA requires a mainframe compatible software to send and receive data from these data sets, and only brand name Compuware software has the performance and capability for handling the vast amounts of data required by the VA. Additionally, even if an alternative software was capable of handling the large data sets required by VA, deployment of the alternative software would require reconfiguration of millions of lines of code across the over 60 applications that currently use Compuware software. This reconfiguration would be necessary to adjust scripts, or a sequence of instructions, that have been set up to run automatically utilizing the Compuware products. If VA utilized an alternative brand software, changes to scripts would be necessary to utilize the new software, and to have that new software provide the required functionality. This reconfiguration process is very labor intensive and would require a minimum of three years to complete. This estimate is based on prior reconfiguration efforts of similar magnitude. Further, while the necessary reconfiguration was being performed, both Compuware and the new software would need to be executing in parallel to ensure data integrity. The cost of running both products simultaneously is estimated to be double the current renewal license fee. These costs would not be recovered through competition. Additionally, training would need to be provided for VA analysts to be able to write code on the new software. This would require extensive training to enable staff to duplicate many of the more complex solutions and would incur additional costs, in the form of loss of programming manhours as the many of VA Compuware programmers would be trained on the new software. The current IO information technology infrastructure utilizes brand name Compuware Abend-Aid, Abend-Aid for CICS, File-Aid, Expediter, and Strobe software. VA requires support for these products for continued operational availability. Only Compuware can provide the necessary software updates because access to the proprietary source code is required to develop and implement software maintenance. No other source is capable of providing the required software maintenance due to the proprietary nature of the software database structures, protocols, and software application programming interfaces. In addition, this code is required to ensure the software is properly configured when services are provided. Without the aforementioned proprietary source code, no source other than Compuware can meet VA's needs. Should license and maintenance renewal for the Compuware software not be acquired, there is an immediate risk to production batch cycles that rely on Compuware tools. Compuware software maintenance is vital to VA for continued sustainment of effective job and file management to keep production processing within expected customer expectations.