ServiceNow- 8.405-6(b)- Items peculiar to one manufacturer

FAR 8.405-6(b), Items peculiar to one manufacturer.

Based on market research it was determined that limited competition is available among resellers of the aforementioned brand name software licenses. The ServiceNow tool was selected via a competitive brand name procurement by the SBA in December 2020. Service Now is the only software capable of integrating multiple platforms in use by OCIO which technically differentiated the Service Now software from other brand offerings that was consider. Other software considered included JIRA, OSTicket, and Service Manager. These brands were not selected due to the lack of the ability to ingrate multiple platforms. Service Now provides a consolidated, comprehensive capability that cannot be obtained in any single similar product. The ServiceNow SaaS offering is uniquely poised to meet the SBA's requirements for a single service management console because of its ability to integrate disparate business functions.
Integrated business functions are essential to supporting SBA's mission because...
Currently, the existing environment supports daily operations for the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) and the Office of Disaster Assistance (ODA) professionals to track and resolve incidents and service requests for all SBA users across multiple systems. The existing environment also supports SBAs Executive Order 14043 compliance mandates. A failure to renew and expand upon the existing licenses will bring the SBA's automated system monitoring capabilities, ODA and OCIO service desk operations, and E.O. 14043 compliance to an immediate halt E.O. 14043 compliance is dependent on Service Now software and essential to the SBA mission by supporting the COVID-19 vaccination records of federal employees to protect the health and safety of the federal workforce. Specifically, the license renewals and additional quantities and new licenses, are required to support the continued monitoring and troubleshooting of the SBA mission essential systems and critical business management capabilities. Additionally, ServiceNow brand software is the only software that can continue to build upon the SBA's existing ServiceNow platform. The ServiceNow licenses are proprietary licenses that would integrate and build upon current capabilities, current cyber security configurations, system configurations, and platform ATO controls, thus expanding SBA's ability to optimize mission critical business and budgetary workflows and processes.
ServiceNow is an eco-system of service management and business management modules that build upon one another to provide for holistic analysis, dashboards and reporting. The new licenses will be integrated within the SBA Service Now eco-system. are required for the SBA to utilize additional capabilities that are already available within ServiceNow's existing platform but must be licensed separately and configured to operate within the SBA's production environment. The SBA has a large and complex enterprise and as such, requires a myriad of people, processes, and tools to manage its critical business infrastructure and service operations. The additional applications and/or capabilities for which licenses are required will be integrated into the SBA's existing environment to provide two-way communication with all other areas of the platform. Two-way communication is needed to maintain data integrity.
Managing multiple applications for disparate service and business management functions across the enterprise would not be possible nor would the SBA gain the visibility necessary to measure and improve its business processes. All applications in the ServiceNow Portfolio are built on the ServiceNow Platform, and therefore all metrics, tasks, services, assets, people, locations, and information are stored together, creating a single system of record and a single system of engagement for the enterprise. Obtaining the required capabilities through disparate, incompatible systems will result in duplicated costs and effort as the same functionality would have to be implemented and configured on a new and separate platform thereby creating multiple systems of record, additional cyber security compliance requirements, and service management dashboards. This will significantly degrade the efficiency of the SBA's service management operations, as well as compromise data integrity, thereby disrupting critical service to SBA employees. No other brand name software can communicate with the existing ServiceNow software and applications already in production on SBA's ServiceNow platform.