WashingtonExec 2015 Market Outlook Series
We look forward to a new year and new opportunities for innovation and growth in the government contracting community. This past year, we experienced an increased emphasis on cybersecurity, the government’s procurement process and a perpetual focus on doing more with less.
WashingtonExec reached out to those most knowledgeable and experienced in the federal contracting space. We asked executives in and around the beltway for insight regarding where they see the government contracting community headed in 2015. Topics discussed include M&A activity, cloud computing, privacy issues, data collection, healthcare IT, defense and more.
Joe Martore, President and CEO of CALIBRE, proposed that fiscal year 2015 will largely resemble that of 2014, with a continued emphasis on competition and cost optimization.
Joe Martore: While it is certainly good news that there is a budget agreement in place, we have to remember that Sequestration is still the law of the land and may have impacts on our industry in 2016. Overall, however, I think fiscal 2015 will be similar to 2014. I believe the government services market will continue to be hyper-competitive, incumbents will be under great pressure and federal agencies will continue to focus on cost optimization. These dynamics may contribute to continued industry consolidation, a slower rate of awarding contracts, and customers demanding that mission requirements be met at the lowest price.
There are growing opportunities for information collaboration and analytics, consolidation and transformation services, and providing ways to reduce existing system sustainment costs beyond the hyper growth markets: cloud, mobility, health care, data analytics and cybersecurity. These markets have created the big data environment that we live in today. Government and industry have an opportunity here to collaborate and find common ground on storing and protecting bulk data. There will always be a tension between the desire for more data by businesses / agencies and concern for privacy by individuals. Practice indicates that the trend to collection of more and more data will continue.
Going forward, CALIBRE plans to continue to focus on self-service data visualization, non-structured data, larger data sets, innovative technologies, new security tools, mobility, and virtualization and cloud-based computing. While designing our products with a ubiquitous-access mobile-first mentality providing greater user access and experience, we will also be ready for “predictably unpredictable” opportunities, with an emphasis on agility and awareness.
Related: CALIBRE EVP, COO Jeff Giangiuli Talks New Role, Challenging Market and Advice to Millenials; 16 Government Contractors Head Washington Post’s List of ‘Top 150 Companies to Work For’
