Renewal of Sonnet software maintenance support

Active

Contract Opportunity

Primary POC: Prateema Carvajal (prateema.carvajal@nist.gov)

Secondary POC: Monica Brown (monica.brown@nist.gov)

Title:  Sonnet software maintenance support renewal – Combined Sources Sought/Notice of Intent to Sole Source

BACKGROUND

***THIS IS A COMBINED SOURCES SOUGHT NOTICE AND NOTICE OF INTENT TO SOLE SOURCE***

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is seeking information from sources that may be capable of providing maintenance support to existing Sonnet software licenses. If no alternate sources are identified, the Government intends to issue a Sole Source Award to Sonnet Software. (126 N. Salina Street, Syracuse, NY 13202) under the authority of FAR 13.106-1(b). The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) code for this acquisition is 513210, Software Publisher with a size standard of $47.0 M.

This requirement is for the maintenance and support of a current NIST-used product that is a critical component of NIST's existing enterprise IT architecture as defined in the NIST Technology Reference Model for Central IT Services.

NIST currently has a license for the Sonnet platform by Sonnet Software, Inc., for the industry's most accurate and reliable high frequency planar EM software. Sonnet software has been identified as a need essential to NIST researchers in a number of Laboratories throughout NIST for several years. NIST is seeking software support services to provide additional software licenses maintenance, security upgrades, and technical support for NIST Sonnet software packages.

The continued maintenance and support of the software provided by Sonnet Software is important for the NIST researchers.

Replacing it with another product would:

- Require the purchase of new start-up licenses of the competing product at approximately 4-5 times the cost of purchasing this maintenance and support.

- Retraining all staff in the use of the replacement product.

- Rewriting all the code written in this product in the format/language/syntax of the new product.

Failing to purchase this maintenance and support means that NIST will not be able to support the current versions of the product as they become available, including IT security patches and updates, and will not be able to open tickets for vendor support. Critical NIST IT support would fail to function.

HOW TO RESPOND TO THIS NOTICE

In responding to this notice, please DO NOT PROVIDE PROPRIETARY INFORMATION. Please include only the following information, readable in either Microsoft Word 365, Microsoft Excel 365, or .pdf format, in the response. Submit the response by email to the Primary Point of Contact and, if specified, to the Secondary Point of Contact listed at the bottom of this notice as soon as possible, and preferably before the closing date and time of this notice.

• Provide the complete name of your company, address, name of contact for follow-up questions, their email, their phone number and, if your company has an active registration in https://sam.gov, your company’s Unique Entity ID (UEI).

• Details about what your company is capable of providing that meets or exceeds NIST’s minimum requirements.

• Whether your company is an authorized reseller of the product or service being cited and evidence of such authorization.

• Identify any aspects of the description of the requirements in the BACKGROUND section above that could be viewed as unduly restrictive or create unnecessary barriers that adversely affect your firm’s ability to fully participate in a procurement for such services and explain why. Please offer suggestions for how the requirements could be organized or structured to encourage the participation of small businesses.

• For the NAICS code

• Indicate whether your company is (a) a small business or (b) other than small business. See the Table of Small Business Size Standards and the associated .pdf download file for small business size standards and additional information.


• If you believe the NAICS code listed in this notice is not the best NAICS code for the type of product addressed in this notice, identify an alternative NAICS code that you believe would be more appropriate for the planned procurement.

• If your firm has existing Federal Supply Schedule contract(s) or other contracts for products or services against which the Department may be able to place orders, identify the contract number(s) and other relevant information.

• Describe your firm’s experience (as a prime, subcontractor, or consultant) providing the products or services described in Background section.

• Provide any other information that you believe would be valuable for the Government to know as part of its market research for this requirement.

• Please let us know if you would like to engage to get a better understanding of the requirement or need additional information about the Government’s requirement for the products or services described in the Background section.

QUESTIONS REGARDING THIS NOTICE

Questions regarding this notice may be submitted via email to the Primary Point of Contact and the Secondary Point of Contact listed in this notice. Questions should be submitted so that they are received by 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time on December 6, 2025. Questions will be anonymized and answered via sources sought notice amendment following the question submission deadline.

IMPORTANT NOTES

The information received in response to this notice will be reviewed and considered so that the NIST may appropriately solicit for its requirements in the near future.

This notice should not be construed as a commitment by the NIST to issue a solicitation or ultimately award a contract.

This notice is not a request for a quotation. Responses will not be considered as proposals or quotations.

No award will be made as a result of this notice.

NIST is not responsible for any costs incurred by the respondents to this notice.

NIST reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and appropriate.

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