Brian Strosser

The month of September marks the busiest buying season for the federal government. In the final month of fiscal year 2018, an astonishing $97 billion was spent on 509, 828 contracts. On average, this equates to $3.2 billion per day. September is also getting busier and busier. Between 2015 and 2018 spending increased by 39%.

The old business adage runs, “Nothing happens until somebody sells something.” To which you might add this corollary: nothing good happens in the absence of strong requirements.

The days are getting shorter, and, as the end of September approaches, the window of opportunity for technology providers to capitalize on federal fiscal year-end sales opportunities is shrinking. September 30th marks the end of the federal government’s fiscal year which means the run-up to month-end is a busy one as contractors vie for federal “use it or lose it” dollars.

Many states' fiscal years are quickly coming to an end, and at DLT we’re committed to making the job of the procurement officer as easy as possible as they scramble to make smart and responsible purchasing decisions with remaining taxpayer dollars. Part of this process is raising awareness of what’s new in our extensive portfolio of IT solutions including big data and analysis, cloud, cybersecurity, application lifecycle, digital design, IT consolidation and management, and more.

If you’re a technology solutions vendor, you’re about to enter a crazy busy time of year. It’s state and local government fiscal year-end season! The days are getting longer, and time is running out to close those year-end sales deals before June 30th. Work is already a top source of stress for many Americans – you don’t need anymore. So, we’ve compiled some stress management techniques that will help you thrive and survive SLED fiscal year-end 2019!

The state and local government IT market has always been something of a chimera to marketers. At $130 billion annually, it’s a third larger than federal. But it’s a fragmented market, given that it consists of 50 states and more than 3,000 counties. Throw in the large cities from Boston to Los Angeles and it becomes even harder to access.

Cybersecurity endures as a top priority for federal agencies, the Trump administration, and Congress. So whatever other budget battles that might lie ahead, cyber will remain an important opportunity. In fact, two recent reports ought to scare the heck out of not just agency managers but pretty much every American.

DevOps became part of the fashionable lexicon for software development a few years ago. The government, at least here and there, has adopted the concept enthusiastically. More recently and with growing urgency, the syllable “Sec” – for security – has joined the DevOps concept. Many federal IT shops call it DevSecOps.

2019 will be the year of the hybrid cloud, claim federal executives. As offices like FedRAMP, OMB, and GSA continue to promote cloud computing as the path to IT modernization, hybrid cloud can help alleviate the regulatory compliance and security requirements that agencies must adhere to. With a hybrid strategy, agencies can maintain legacy applications and an on-premise infrastructure, while leveraging the public cloud for extra storage or compute power as needed, or when they need to introduce new services.

The ongoing 2018-2019 government shutdown which directly impacts 800,000 federal workers is on its way towards being the longest in history with President Trump saying it could continue for months or years. The longer the shutdown lasts the wider the impacts to government systems, programs, citizens and businesses. Here are some expected and unexpected fallouts of the current government shutdown. Muddying an Already Complicated Tax Season

The service-to-the-citizen movement is adding oomph to federal agencies’ adoption of cloud computing. And vice versa.

The Obama and Trump administrations may not have a lot in common. But encouraging federal agencies to move their computing workloads to cloud services providers has been a definite point of policy continuity. Recall that during the Obama years, cloud and a fresh data center consolidation initiative roughly coincided. (I say “fresh” because of presidential findings that the government has too many computers dated at least to the Reagan administration).

With Federal Fiscal Year End rapidly approaching, government buyers can breathe a sigh of relief that the spending frenzy is almost over. But, you’re probably reading stories and anecdotes in the media about examples of wasteful spending that occurred during the last few weeks of the fiscal year as agencies rushed to spend their “use it or lose it” dollars.