4 defense tech targets for FY17

By Stephanie Meloni, consultant

We’re one month into the government’s 2017 fiscal year and it’s clear where the technology bright spots will be for the next 12 months and (most likely) beyond: Autonomy, cybersecurity, infrastructure, and advanced analytics.

You’ll hear more about how these technologies are shaping the Department of Defense at the Third Annual Government IT Sales Summit on Nov. 17 in Reston, Va. immixGroup DOD expert, Lloyd McCoy, and I will go into more details during our DOD FY17 Federal Budget Briefing.

Autonomy is the biggest overarching trend that will affect all technology categories. Because budgets remain largely flat, this is a way program managers are stretching dollars—it allows them to direct personnel to concentrate on the mission and not administrative tasks.

Cybersecurity remains a bright spot within IT budgets. The FY17 DOD budget request calls for a 35 percent increase in cyber spending. The DOD will be working on improving the response to cyber attacks, so expect demand around tools that can help end users map the digital battlefield. Customers will also be looking to automate patching and other security measures. Another big trend in the coming year for cyber will be automation of cyber threat detection and predictive cyber analytics.

For infrastructure, DOD definitely wants to move as much workload as possible to the cloud for more cost savings. Cloud computing is also driving automation and outsourcing of IT operations. As the DOD continues to increase its use of cloud service providers (CSPs), one thing they’ll need help with is automated patching to ensure network security providers have visibility across all CSPs involved with hosting their data.

Another place with the DOD wants to make better use of its personnel’s time is with advanced analytics. Far too much time is spent on data cleanup and preparation and DOD officials see automation and human-machine learning as true game-changers. The department wants to let computers do analysis and then let personnel make queries of their data.

Learn more about this year’s Government IT Sales Summit and reserve your seat today. We look forward to meeting you there!