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savingslovingmolly

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  1. I like that idea a lot! I will work on eval criteria for it! I think wording is going to be very important.
  2. We have actually already done an RFI and an industry day. However, because this requirement also includes so much technical support and the potential for major changes to the system over the life of the contract (I didn't talk about those CLINS), the interested vendors have mostly been big business vendors with a lot of clout in the LMS industry rather than a vendor with expertise in license consolidation. As a result, they have only stated briefly an ability to consolidate licensing but no innovative solutions. I have done extensive research on the licensing models of each application we currently have though. My CO has instructed us to end discussions with vendors because of some concerns he had so if I don't get any ideas in here, I will probably have to go forward with the language I've already written. However, I do think in the future I will make an early effort to concentrate more on licensing during market research.
  3. I am not a contracting officer, I am a PM. I am writing a PWS for an IDIQ contract that is for support of an existing Learning Management System (LMS) that consists of 3 integrated applications in a commercial cloud environment. We are hoping to consolidate all the licenses and technical support services (Service Desk, application administration, systems engineering, integration support, etc.) under one vendor in a competitive, single award IDIQ. The licensing model has been very complex to figure out for two primary reasons. For one, the existing system requires licensing for 4 different products which have different pricing breakpoints and each product has a different method of calculating the number of licenses required. For example, one product requires an annual license for every single registered user, another product requires a license for every user who is currently enrolled in a course, so if a student takes a six week course and finishes it, he/she is only using a license for that 6 week period (or if the student is enrolled in 5 courses, still just one license). For the past 3 years, the Government has been procuring licenses from each vendor directly and has really mismanaged them and has paid for five times the number used. The CO and I came up with the idea to have the vendor propose a pricing table for ranges of users (based on license pricing breakpoints) and stating that the vendor shall be responsible for procuring all licenses necessary for the required number of users to access to the system and courses. The other issue is the one I'm looking for a solution for. The system is in it's infancy and even now just has 50 users currently. However, the nature of the mission it's supporting means having a GIANT pool of potential customers, including both mandatory users internal to our organization and voluntary external partner organizations. Therefore, we need to have a lot of flexibility for rapid growth in users over the 5 year PoP of this contract (up to 100,000 users) without paying for users we don't have yet (the historical approach). So far I've written the IGCE to include a min/max number of licenses per year with the following language: "The Government will fund in the base and each annual option the number of expected users for that year which will not be less than the minimum per year as stated below. If an increase in licensing is needed during the year, the Government will award a task order funded with the prorated amount (at monthly increments) for the increase in users for the remainder of the year. All licenses procured on behalf of the Government shall have the same Period of Performance (PoP) at the end of the base and each option. The vendor may propose a different licensing approach if they have one that is advantageous to the Government but it must allow for incremental increases in supported users as needed." That's the best I could come up with for allowing the flexibility we're looking while still trying to get the best value for the Government. My CO wants to add the sentence "Licensing shall be billed on a monthly basis for the actual number of users over the previous month" which I'm not sure really helps us because the vendor is going to have to procure licenses in the bundles they're offered by the OEM ahead of time and will likely add a premium to mitigate the risk of us using only 500 licenses when they're paying for 2,000. I am looking for any suggestions for a licensing model that will fit our stated needs better. Ideally, I would love some kind of language for either a pay-as-you-go model which is advantageous to both the vendor and the Government or even language that would allow credits for unused licenses instead of the sentence my CO suggested (all in a legal way, obviously). The CO is awesome and very mission focused but doesn't have a ton of experience with IDIQ or non-standard contracts/language. So, if I come to him with a good idea and FAR references, he'll be very open to it. Also, I know the pricing language won't be in the PWS in the RFQ but I just put it all there now and he pulls it out as he's putting together the RFQ. I'm open to any ideas or suggestions, just be patient with me as contracting is a second language.
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