2015 Market Outlook: Altamira Chief Strategy Officer Jonathan Moneymaker — National Security Field Positioned for Most Growth

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.

Altamira’s Chief Strategy Officer Jonathan Moneymaker believes the national security space is positioned for the most significant growth.

WashingtonExec: What will next year hold for Government Contracting? More M&A Activity, consolidation? More IT budget cuts?

Jonathan Moneymaker: 2015 will be an exciting dynamic year in GovCon. The threats in the national security space are rapidly evolving and becoming more sophisticated, yet innovations continue to push the boundaries enabling new remarkable solutions to come life.

I expect M&A activity to pick up significantly over 2014 as government acquisition dynamics of consolidated contracts and extended acquisition timelines counter industry’s strive for new market growth and access. This M&A activity at nearly all levels, from prime consolidation to niche tuck-ins, will provide a natural balancing of excess supply in the market resulting in the right amount of stronger better positioned offerers to address the government’s needs.

IT budget cuts will continue, capitalizing on the technological efficiencies that next generation cloud architectures bring but do think some amount of those savings will go toward advancing analytics and processing making the overall system as a whole more effective.

WashingtonExec: What future collaboration will take place between industry and government in addressing tough issues? Healthcare, Defense, Big Data, Mobility, Cloud, etc?

Jonathan Moneymaker: As industry continues to out pace the government’s ability to innovate on their own, in many areas collaboration will be an essential component of success. To fully leverage the power of collaboration, we must look beyond just technology and into overarching policies, as well as concept of operations. As with any collaboration, trust is a vital element and establishing bilateral protections for all contributing parties will further drive openness and advance the dialog.

WashingtonExec: In the past and currently government agencies have focused predominantly on data collection and storage when it came to big data, many organizations have moved on to finally analyze and use the data for intelligence purposes. What are your thoughts on the collection of data through almost everything we do, from frequent shoppers cards to healthcare and education technology, combined with the public’s desire to maintain their privacy? Will the two be able to strike a balance?

Jonathan Moneymaker: This, will be one of the largest and most important conversations over the next decade. The incredible amounts of instantly available data enables capabilities that once were never thought possible. We must be very careful as we step into this era of realtime dynamic analytics and maintain the trusts associated with data sovereignty and personal privacy. I’ve very excited to see the realm of the possible around all the new value that can be created and innovations discovered – 2015 will mark a key milestone in the conversation of striking the balance.

WashingtonExec: Where do you see a potential for fusing technologies with modern business practices to better the efficiency of government?

Jonathan Moneymaker: This is the key: technology innovation for innovation’s sake can lead to waste, but when married up with full spectrum innovation, including business practices and models, you can see dramatic efficiencies.

WashingtonExec: What markets in the GovCon space to you see growing/contracting?

Jonathan Moneymaker: As the overall GovCon markets remains relatively flat, there are certainly some pockets of growth. Arguably enabled by the markets’ IT efficiencies and captured savings areas of most significant growth, I believe, will be in the national security space.