Veterans Affairs tests the market for Microsoft alternatives
Gettyimages.com/J. David Ake / Contributor
By
Nick Wakeman
The department is looking at the prices of replacement products for its 540,000-user enterprise stack. But with a short turnaround time, Microsoft likely still has an inside track.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has kicked off a market research effort to look at the potential costs of replacing some or all of the Microsoft products under VA's enterprise agreement with the company.
The department has identified key capabilities under its current agreement including productivity and collaboration, identity and access management, and unified endpoint management.
A request for information posted Monday says VA has more than 540,000 users of its productivity and collaboration tools including email, file storage and video conferencing.
VA wants industry input on whether the requirements are too restrictive and create long-term vendor lock-in or limit VA’s ability to migrate away from a solution in the future.
This is still just market research effort and it is too soon to point to this as VA wanting to move away from Microsoft.
The RFI was released Oct. 5 and the deadline for responses is Oct. 16, a short turnaround time when you consider the details VA is asking for.
VA wants respondents to provide a “detailed Bill of Materials (BOM) that includes part numbers, quantities and a description of all products required to fulfill the functional/technical requirements for the key capability area in the form of a quote that includes pricing per part number.”
VA also wants data that will support its “should-cost” analysis. This includes a breakdown of the drivers underlying pricing for items such as infrastructure, labor, and licensing.
That information could indicate that VA is looking for information it can leverage in any renegotiations with Microsoft.
VA also is opening areas for specific non-Microsoft solutions for productivity, security and identity. Vendors can respond on any one, several or all of the capability areas.
The RFI also asks in several places for respondents to describe how different products from different vendors would be integrated.
“Our research is being conducted under a solution-agnostic process… independent of incumbent vendor or platform,” the RFI states.
VA is also lowering one of the biggest barriers for vendors new to the federal market. The RFI points to a July 28 VA policy memo that says alternative solutions do not need an existing FedRAMP authorization to be considered.
VA will instead judge security against NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 and its own directives. Any solution would have to earn a VA authority to operate before running in production.
The department targets an ATO decision within 60 days of a system meeting intake requirements, though that "reflects a service level target only and does not guarantee a favorable authorization outcome."
That could open the door to commercial vendors that have not gone through FedRAMP's lengthy and expensive authorization process.