IDL Software Maintenance

CONTINUATION OF CD-492 JUSTIFICATION FOR OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION (APPLICABLE TO CONTRACTS +$100,000) I. Contracting Organization: NOAA Acquisition & Grants Office Mountain Region Acquisition Division 325 Broadway Street, MC3 Boulder, CO 80305 II. Description of Action: This action is for a 5-yr contract to renew and continue maintenance for a commercially available software product, IDL. This renewal contract will replace a previous, now-expired 5-year contract. The contract is firm-fixed price, with an initial Base Period of Performance, and 4 option periods. III. Description of Supplies or Services: The contract will buy NOAA an unlimited Site License for the use of IDL, a mathematical visualization software, which is mission critical to NOAA. The licenses and costs are shared by NOAA Line Offices OAR, NESDIS, and NWS/NCEP. NOAA uses IDL to create visual and mathematical models in support of mission critical operations in NOAA Line Offices for weather forecast predictions, environment modeling, climate predictions, and satellite data processing. The IDL software may be run on standalone computer workstations, in a client-server environment, or as a node in a super-computing cluster. NOAA needs the unlimited license to have the flexibility to configure the software and allocate new licenses in a fast, expedient, and dynamic manner. All NOAA Line Offices agreed that the unlimited license was necessary, and that controlling license generation through a license management process was inefficient, counterproductive, and actually cost more than unlimited licenses. The reason for this Periods of Performance structure is to not have renewals early in the fiscal year when budget are often limited by Continuing Resolutions. The Required Award Date is as soon as possible. IV. Authority: - 41 U.S.C. 253(c)(1), Only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements There is only one source for sales of this commercially available software, and that is direct from the owner/manufacturer. Continuing NOAA's IDL operations without interruptions is a national priority. This software is mission critical. IDL provides capabilities at the very core of NOAA's weather forecast and climate prediction operations. V. Applicability of Authority: NOAA's investment in IDL as a NOAA standard is significant, and IDL operations support the core of NOAA's mission to deliver satellite data processing, weather forecasts, climate predictions. For NOAA's 6000 sites that requiring mathematical modeling and visualization software, nearly all the source code is written in the IDL language. Workstations, servers, and super-computer are extensively processing IDL programs. If NOAA were to try to change to operations using other software the disruption to current operations would be immediately catastrophic, services to end users halted, cost would be both prohibitive and not funded, conversion would take at least 5 years, and benefits none. One third of NOAA's workforce is directly tied to using IDL. All of the nation depends on their output to understand weather and environment. Previous maintenance contracts for IDL expired and NOAA seeks to renew the IDL contract for another 5 years. The current investment in IDL is so considerable, that the justification for IDL is not only because the cost of the recommended NOAA enterprise site license for IDL is the lowest cost to the government for the software alone. NOAA's investment in its human resources (the skillset of its scientific community), the computing infrastructure (computer hardware and networks), and shared software libraries and system interfaces, which are all heavily invested in IDL, prohibit any ability to change just based on weighing the renewal of a maintenance contract. The effort to change would require a long-term plan and budget to move NOAA to another technical architecture, and neither intention, plan, nor budget exist amongst any of the NOAA Line Offices using IDL. The Sole Source Justifications and Requirements for using IDL is: there is only one single source, distributor and seller of IDL. That source is the owner and manufacturer. If IDL operations were interrupted there would be immediate Unusual and Compelling Urgencies. Without continuity of IDL, there will be operational emergencies in NOAA - OAR, NESDIS, and NWS. At risk is the ability to continue NOAA's mission to provide the public the weather and climate forecasting products from NOAA, on which the nation depends. NOAA scientists use IDL to support the NOAA mission. IDL is used to analyze, mathematically manipulate and visually display satellite algorithm results, and satellite data. It is used in stellite remote sensing, with the ability to read raw satellite data files, then process the data using IDL-libraries and NOAA-written IDL software procedures. IDL statistical analysis for publications and presentations, data imagery, file creation and general data manipulation of large satellite data sets. All satellite data processing is done in IDL. The tasks are spread across different servers and laptops. For example, IDL is used in the wind applications to ingest the satellite data, calibrate the data, map the earth, calculate winds, map the output, and produce display products and output files that are used by other NOAA systems. Similarly IDL is used to analyze wave data. These are one some of the projects that use IDL, this list being limited to NESDIS: - o NPOESS Data Exploitation SST - o Polar PSDI funded ACSPO - o Ocean Remote Sensing - o AVHRR Stewardship - o NPOESS Cal/Val - o GOES-R - o Additional examples of projects using IDL may be found at these website links: http://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/sod/sst/squam/ http://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/sod/sst/micors/ http://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/sod/sst/ec/ http://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/sod/sst/calval Argo (http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/argo/) Global Temperature and Salinity Profile Program (http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/GTSPP/) Ocean currents (http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/tsdb/) NODC Coastal Water Temperature Guide (http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/dsdt/cwtg/ ) VI. Efforts to Obtain Competition: IDL Software is a commercially available software product. ITT Visual Information Solutions (ITT VIS) is owner and manufacturer of IDL, and is the only seller and source of the product. The company has no authorized resellers. Here is a description of the company: ITT Visual Information Solutions (ITT VIS) a wholly owner subsidiary of ITT Space Systems Division, located in Boulder, Colorado USA, is the exclusive manufacturer, developer, direct sales channel, and distributor for the IDL - - Interactive Data Language software in the United States and Canada. ITT VIS uses authorized distributors for the IDL software in a number of European and Asian countries, there are no authorized third party distributors, resellers, or agents for the IDL software in the United States and Canada, where ITT VIS sells the software as the sole source supplier. IDL is the pioneering software for data analysis, data visualization, and application development. IDL's features include: advanced image processing, interactive 2D and 3D graphics, object oriented programming, volume visualization, a high-level programming language with integrated mathematics and statistics, flexible data I/O, a cross-platform GUI toolkit, and versatile program linking tools. ITT Visual Information Solutions (ITT VIS) a wholly owner subsidiary of ITT Space Systems Division, located in Boulder, Colorado USA, is the manufacturer, developer, owner, and exclusive direct sales channel and distributor for the ENVI - (Environment for Visualizing Images) software in the United States and Canada. ITT VIS uses authorized distributors for the ENVI software in a number of European and Asian countries, there are no authorized third party distributors, resellers, or agents for the ENVI software in the United States and Canada, where ITT VIS sells the software as the sole source supplier. ENVI is a state-of-the-art image processing system designed to provide comprehensive image processing, exploitation and analysis of satellite and airborne remote sensing data. ITT-VIS sells new IDL single license copies on GSA Schedule 70. However, ITT-VIS does not sell maintenance or unlimited site/enterprise licenses off of GSA, which is the NOAA requirement. NOAA staff also suggested to ITT-VIS the possibility of teaming with any Prime vendor on the DHHS/NIH GWAC, called NITAAC ECS III. Discussions were initiated with NIH, several vendors, and ITT-VIS about the feasibility of being added to that GWAC. After some inquiry by the ITT-VIS CFO, ITT-VIS declined. NOAA has been using IDL for over 10 years. This software is in a class of software used for Research and Development in scientific and mathematical applications. Other software types in that class include MATLAB, and Mathematica. NOAA is not considering, has no requirement, and no current plans to migrate to any other software platform for the current weather and climate applications. The requirement here is for IDL. Compelling Urgency Synopsis: This software is mission critical for NOAA. Any interruption in operations - i.e. if maintenance license keys were suspended and ability to generate new licenses were temporarily disabled by ITT-VIS - will have immediate impact weather forecast and environment prediction operations in the National Weather Service / National Center for Environmental Prediction, and in the National ENational Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service. Please refer to Section Application of Authority from above for corroborating justifications. VII. Determination of Fair and Reasonable Cost: Analysis of Costs: - Using the market, street, or GSA cost, a new IDL license lists at #### each. - NOAA has an installed base of approximately 4000 IDL licenses in current use. Under the previous contract we have activated 6000-7000. For example, NESDIS estimates 2,000 active licenses (although 3800 licenses are registered to NESDIS under the unlimited license program); NWS/NCEP estimates 200 active licenses; and OAR has over 1500 registered licenses with the number of OAR active license unknown. - The cost savings of the NOAA enterprise license is OVER 100 TIMES SAVINGS, when comparing the NOAA enterprise license to the market value. - Further, if NOAA were to change to a new software, the labor and effort would be considerable. In NESDIS alone, a conservative total of estimated personnel hours it would take to migrate to another package is approximately 50,000 hours. This is 25 years. At a conservative, average, loaded cost of $100,000/year/researcher/programmer, this is $2.5M. Not to mention, the risk to migrate and its risk to negatively impact operations is not something we want to propose. VIII. Market Research: IDL capabilities have successfully met NOAA's needs and supported NOAA's mission for over 10 years. IDL capabilities are compare favorably across software products in a similar type/class category. There is no risk that the company or product will disappear from the marketplace. There are similar mathematical visualization products in the industry. Examples include: open source GDL, PV-Wave, MATLAB, or Mathematica. However no other solution will less cost than NOAA current IDL solution. See "Other Facts" below; the cost, level of effort, and business risks for NOAA to convert from IDL is so prohibitively high, there is no justification to change from IDL. IX. Other Facts: This contract is a renewal of maintenance for a product already in use at NOAA for over 10-15 years. In previous contracts, the specifications, descriptions, justifications, etc., were faithfully completed with due diligence. Hours and funding required to migrate to another data analysis and visualization package: For NESDIS alone, the personnel hours that it would take to migrate to another package is conservatively estimated at approximately 50,000 hours. This is 25 years. OAR and NWS/NCEP Line Offices would have similar significant estimates to convert to a new tool. These low estimates do not include cost estimates to test for quality asurance or to contract out the effort, becaue staff resources cannot be diverted from mission work to perform conversion and QA task. Surely the above conservative cost estimate - to migrate from IDL to another product - is more likely many time higher. X. Interested Sources: Amy Denesha, Maintenance Account Manager ITT Visual Information Solutions 4990 Pearl East Circle Boulder, CO 80301 adenesha@ittvis.com Direct Line: 303-413-3962 Fax: 303-786-9909 XI. Steps to Foster Competition: NOAA has been using IDL for over 10 years. This software is used for Research and Development in scientific and mathematical applications. NOAA is not considering, has no requirement, and no current plans to migrate to any other software platform for the current weather and climate applications. The requirement here is for IDL. NOAA will continue to use IDL as a primary analysis and display tool for years to come, or until a suitable competitor is found, for the following reasons: IDL is portable among NOAA's primary computing platforms (i.e. Windows, Unix, Linux, Apple). NOAA has invested substantial resources into developing IDL code in the conduct of our research. Although an formal survey has not been conducted we estimate the lines of code at well over 3 million. Other products are not as well suited as IDL to analysis and display of our data. Other companies provide products that share some of the features of IDL, but all fall short of our requirements in different areas - none are as well suited to analysis and display of NOAA's data. These products include MATLAB, Mathematica, and PV-Wave. There are also several Opensource products being developed, however they don't currently provide the same features as IDL. When the IDL contract was initially awarded in 2000 several companies were considered including MATLAB and Mathematica, and PV-Wave. NOAA currently uses MATLAB and Mathematica extensively, but applies them to different research problems for which they are better suited. MATLAB is primarily used for engineering problems, and Mathematica is used for solving complex mathematical equations. PV-Wave, which is a competitor with IDL does not provide their software products for the apple platform. When approached during the last contract renewal they had no plans to provide their software for Apple. NOAA uses a variety of commercial off-the-shelf software for appropriate research problems. As vendors provide software that meets NOAA's requirements we will work diligently to provide them with the opportunity to meet our needs. At this time there are no vendors providing the features and platform coverage of IDL. XII. Contracting Officer's Certification: The contracting officer's signature on the CD-492 evidences that s/he has determined this document to be both accurate and complete to the best of his/her knowledge and belief. XIII. Technical/Requirements Personnel's Certification: As evidenced by the applicable signatures on the CD-492, the technical and/or requirements personnel have certified that any supporting data contained herein which is their responsibility is both accurate and complete.