70--Intent to Award - Research Systems, Inc

The US Geological Survey (USGS) has a requirement for ENVI/IDL software maintenance and support. This service is known to be available only from Research Systems, Inc, as the only provider of the service because they are the manufacturer and sole provider of ENVI/IDL software maintenance and support. The USGS is aware of no other source that can provide the above. Therefore, it intends to make an award to Research Systems, Inc, unless it is contacted by any vendor who believes they can provide the same service. Vendors are invited to contact the Contract Specialist at [email protected] no later than 11:00 AM EST, Monday, August 29, 2011 with an affirmative answer. SOLE SOURCE JUSTIFICATION STATES THE FOLLOWING PART: This justification is for the purchase of annual software site license maintenance and technical support for ENVI/IDL software from Research Systems, Inc. The anticipated contract type is firm fixed price. The software site license is mission-critical to the USGS by providing EROS's programs and projects with the tools required to accomplish the completion of many tasks associated with EROS=BFs fundamental mission, that is viewing, analyzing, sharing and manipulating geospatial data. These tasks include gathering information from ad-hoc data visualization and data analysis, along with reading, extracting, processing, analyzing, and sharing information from geospatial imagery. ENVI provides advanced, user-friendly tools to read, explore, prepare, analyze and share information extracted from geospatial imagery not known to exist in any other software products. IDL is a timesaving, cross-platform computing environment for data analysis, visualization, and application development. IDL requires minimal code and program expertise to produce excellent visualizations and analyses. Research Systems, Inc is the sole manufacturer of the ENVI/IDL software and has not provided for third-party site license maintenance of the software. Only Research Systems, Inc has the requisite knowledge, experience, and legal rights to the underlying technology in order to provide competent software site licensing support for this software. ENVI/IDL is a proprietary software application made by Research Systems, Inc. Research Systems, Inc manufactured this software and is the sole source provider of ENVI/IDL software maintenance and support.