2015 Market Outlook: Pragmatics’ Joe Brock, Jr. — Investments in Wireless Infrastructure Will Drive Innovation

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.

Pragmatics‘ COO Joe Brock, Jr. said that investments in wireless structure and related policies, such as BYOD, will continue to drive innovation.

WashingtonExec: What do you see as the next big IT innovation for the 21st century workforce?

Joe Brock, Jr.: The federal government deploys an increasingly mobile workforce and must have the tools and infrastructure necessary to securely support domestic and global missions. Cloud, mobility and security will continue to be government priorities, influencing the types of solutions industry must deliver. While these are not new topics, I see continued focus in these areas as the need to gain efficiencies, protect information and modernize business systems continues. Capabilities such as Software as a Service and Infrastructure as a Service will continue to be leveraged and adapted for the specific needs of the U.S. government.

WashingtonExec: What investments are required to make this happen?

Joe Brock, Jr.: Investments in wireless infrastructure, along with policies such as “bring your own device” (BYOD), will continue to drive innovation. From this mobile platform, there will be further innovation to support training, administrative and business systems. For example, the U.S. Army is one of our clients; we support them by deploying campus-wide secure wireless infrastructure across their installations. This infrastructure supports mobile training, enabling soldiers with mobile devices to leave the classroom and walk through training scenarios at their normal work sites, such as the motor pool. This capability is similar to someone viewing a home repair on YouTube and getting real-time instruction on their mobile device just before making the repair. Secure wireless infrastructure and BYOD are making these concepts a reality for the federal workforce.

WashingtonExec: What are innovations are you seeing in terms of software development practices?

Joe Brock, Jr.: We are seeing a lot of interest in deploying DevOps concepts into all stages of the development lifecycle. DevOps brings together best practices for building, evolving and operating changing systems. These concepts leverage lean and agile approaches to use operations staff through all stages of the development cycle. Early in the lifecycle, this lessens the gap between the developers and those responsible for operating the system. The collaboration promises more resilient systems and reduced risks during deployment. As clients work toward the goal of pushbutton software deployments, up-front involvement and collaboration with operations staff is critical to ensure deployed systems can be maintained.

Related:Pragmatics Awarded $20M Task Order by Defense Information Systems Agency