DRAGEN-GATK Licenses & Support at FRCE & Biowulf

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Contract Opportunity

(4)(i) Description
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Cancer Institute (NCI), Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information Technology (CBIIT), Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), has a requirement for annual licenses and technical support for Illumina DRAGEN Server processors to support the Data Management and Analysis Program (DMAP) for computational biology, sequencing computations, and bio-analysis.
The Government requires the continued use of Illumina's proprietary Dynamic Read Analysis for Genomics (DRAGEN) processor, which is combined with the Broad Institute's Genomic Analysis Tool Kit (GATK) in a DRAGEN-GATK package, for the Whole Genome and Whole Exome Data Processing Workflow at NCI. DRAGEN-GATK will be deployed at NCI's high-performance computing locations at Biowulf (Bethesda, MD) and Fredrick Research Computing Environment (FRCE) (Frederick, MD), with access made available to users via NIH Integrated Data Analysis Platform (NIDAP) and directly on the batch clusters via command line, with jobs managed via Simple Linux Utility for Resource Management (SLURM).
The requirement consists of:
1. Two (2) annual software licenses for LVL 2 DRAGEN Server processors at 250,000 GB throughput (one for FRCE, one for Biowulf); and
2. Two (2) annual DRAGEN Server Advance Exchange Support Plans with Remote Technical Support 8x5 (one for FRCE, one for Biowulf).
Place of performance:
1. FRCE: 8560 Progress Drive, Frederick, MD 21701
2. Biowulf: 6555 Rock Spring Dr, Bethesda, MD 20817
Period of performance: 9/29/2026 through 9/28/2027.
This is a brand name acquisition for licenses and support associated with Illumina, Inc. DRAGEN Server processors. Offerors must be an authorized reseller of Illumina, Inc. to submit an acceptable offer on the resulting Request for Quotation (RFQ).

(4)(ii) Procedures for Award and Anticipated Award Date
Acquisition procedures will be in accordance with RFO 12.201-1. The anticipated award date is on or about August 31, 2026.

(4)(iii) Trade Agreements
The World Trade Organization Government Procurement Agreement (WTO GPA) and Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) do not apply to this acquisition.

(4)(iv) Technical Data
Not applicable. Technical data will not be required for prospective offerors to respond to the resulting solicitation.

(4)(vii) Noncompetitive Contract Action - Intended Source and Justification
This action is anticipated to result in a noncompetitive (brand name/sole source) contract action. The intended source is Illumina, Inc., or its authorized resellers.
Competition is lacking because Illumina is the sole source of the FPGA hardware configuration used in the DRAGEN Server processors, which accelerates data processing and reprocessing by up to 30X. There is no commercially available equivalent using alternative software. NCI has previously purchased and deployed the associated Illumina DRAGEN processors at Biowulf and FRCE, and continued licensing and support of this existing Illumina hardware and software is required to maintain harmonized reference genome alignment and variant-calling procedures across NCI's aggregated whole genome and whole exome sequencing data.

(4)(viii) Qualification Requirement
Yes. To be eligible for award, an offeror must be an authorized reseller of Illumina, Inc. Evidence of authorized reseller status must be submitted in accordance with the instructions in the resulting Request for Quotation (RFQ).

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