2012 has arrived, and with it comes big changes in the Federal IT industry.
Today’s government contracting New Year’s prediction is from Harry Martin, CEO of Intelligent Decisions.
Harry Martin: At the macro level, in 2012 mobility will be the buzz word within the government contracting community. The reasons are clear – mobile devices are becoming more and more capable, mobile bandwidth can exceed land-based capabilities, and the overall cultural acceptance of mobility solutions is becoming common place and even expected.
The Federal Government is currently trying to keep pace with this inevitable IT evolution that is already underway, and this year could be the beginning of its mobility transformation. While mobility solutions can be deployed in months rather than the years that it traditionally takes, to date the biggest hurdle for the Federal mobility transformation has been how to provide security in this rapidly evolving ecosystem. However, searching for the perfect mobility solution will result in implementing none at all, which will mean that Federal workers will miss out on the most powerful IT solutions in years.
At the micro level, the mobility landscape is moving faster than the traditional Federal acquisitions and proposals timetable – a conflict that results in an inability to deploy mobile solutions until they are already obsolete. In order to address this challenge, 2012 should be the beginning of the ”show me, don’t tell me”, IT acquisitions strategy.
It is typically easier to understand, and more valid to demonstrate, a technical solution than to talk about it in a proposal or to theoretically explain it using the traditional PowerPoint presentation. And with the advent of Cloud infrastructures and virtualization, data and computer infrastructures can be moved anywhere at any time, ready to demonstrate at a moment’s notice. This year, successful businesses will actually be ready to respond by demonstrating their solutions rather than relying on the old school, cut and pasted proposals which may have little basis in reality, while Federal acquisitions initiatives will be challenged to adopt these Agile types of acquisitions.
