New Series: WashingtonExec 2012 Prediction Issue: Execs Speak Out
2012 is fast approaching, and with it comes big changes in the Federal IT industry. WashingtonExec is giving local executives the opportunity to share their thoughts on where they see the government contracting industry headed. Leaders of the industry were asked a series of predictions questions focused on challenging issues such as cloud computing, healthcare IT, defense and so forth.
Rick Marcotte, President and CEO of DLT Solutions, told WashingtonExec what his company plans to focus on in the coming year.
“From our perspective as one of the largest Public Sector VARs, we believe that our customers will be managing under stress next year. They’re faced with a range of relatively new requirements like the Data Center Consolidation Initiative; former CIO Vivek Kundra’s 25-Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal IT Management; Steven VanRoekel, the new CIO’s “Future First” emphasis; ever increasing cybersecurity threats; the list goes on, but those are the major issues they’re dealing with.
Mix in the turbulent budgeting environment we’re living in today and it’s evident that our customers need all the support we can give to help them survive and achieve their transformation objectives.
Our strategy in response to this current market environment has been to enhance our traditional pre-sales engineering customer support and post-sales engineering support with collaborative engagement at an earlier stage of our customer dialogs.
During this past year we’ve developed two support structures that we believe will help relieve some of that stress. The first is the DLT Cloud Advisory Group (CAG) staffed by senior engineers that work with our customers to help them articulate and crystallize their particular cloud computing objectives and requirements before selecting a solution (there is plenty of confusion in this area and our CAG is designed to take away some of the “FUD” that goes along with the new Cloud initiatives). The second is a learning portal for cybersecurity that we have named GovDefenders (www.govdefenders.com). This portal is staffed by our own resources as well as top people from three of our key vendor partners with cybersecurity expertise: Symantec, Oracle, and Quest Software. Both the CAG and GovDefenders are designed specifically for support to customers who need access to sophisticated subject matter expertise before they start focusing on a solution to their specific requirement.”