Mobility Fueling IT Infrastructure Purchases at EPA

by Kevin Shaker, Analyst, Market Intelligence

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has both the budget and mission in place to make mobility their next big priority, creating ample opportunities for IT mobile solution providers to help them advance this initiative. The agency’s Strategic Plan outlines a need to increase mobile solutions through FY18. Additionally, the EPA’s FY16 budget request is $45M more than FY15 enacted levels, making the agency a great place to get your solution baked into their IT framework.

The EPA’s Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) originally planned to provide all agency employees mobile access by the end of FY15, yet there is still much work to be done as indicated in the EPA’s Technology Infrastructure Modernization (TIM) Exhibit 300. TIM is the infrastructure piece of the EPA’s IT architecture. In the past TIM centered around data center consolidation, but since the data centers have been merged that are filtering into the EPA’s National Computing Center, the investment is now in virtualization and enterprise mobility. In FY16, the EPA will administer an agency-wide refresh, giving IT vendors the opportunity to sell mobile and infrastructure solutions for TIM’s IT framework.

The increase in mobile technology adoption at the EPA will impact not only BYOD and mobile application vendors, but also network administration and management solution providers. The Agency’s Annual Analytics Report, conducted in early 2015, shows increased web network traffic flowing into EPA-managed online databases, such as Envirofacts. Additionally, these online databases are also being increasingly accessed by tablets and cellular phones. Consequently, the OCIO needs to acquire more routers, switches, and network management tools to accommodate increased network traffic from mobile device usage.

Vendors selling to the EPA will want to keep in mind their goal to virtualize 60% of their servers in FY16, which is directly tied to the agency’s plan to continue migrating to the cloud. It’s important to understand that the EPA has a flexible working capital fund (WCF) which it uses to fund its IT investments. The EPA’s WCF is good news for COTs vendors since it provides the agency with additional resources to purchase IT solutions. Make sure when you’re meeting with EPA decision makers, you position your solution with best-in-breed messaging.

Need help identifying top IT decision makers and opportunities at the EPA? Contact immixGroup’s industry-leading Market Intelligence team today to learn about specific programs and contacts that have a pressing need for your IT solution.