How cloud and SaaS will drive SLED

By Rachel Eckert, SLED consultant

I’ve written about the importance of segmenting the State and Local and Education (SLED) markets for scalability and marketability, but do you know what to market?

Each market segment has its own unique set of issues, trends, and drivers, and knowing what those issues are is key to targeting your sales efforts.

As a preview for next week’s Government IT Sales Summit, let’s briefly walk through the major issues affecting the missions and budgets of certain market segments, and two technologies that government will be leveraging.

• Health & Human Services: You’ll see telehealth technology being introduced not only in the health care technology ecosystem, but also in government legislation. Telehealth technology can provide much-needed access to care for citizens who can’t get to a health care facility or simply live in more rural areas. States, already dealing with tight health care budgets, will be looking for scalable and affordable technology that doesn’t require major hardware or software funding. IT vendors can expect to see cloud and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) opportunities as more states formalize their integration of the technology.
• Transportation: Prepare to start seeing the introduction of autonomous vehicles. State and federal governments are starting to embrace and examine ways to safely incorporate them into the system. Testing compounds are springing up in California, Michigan, and other states. Autonomous or driverless vehicles often rely on cloud and SaaS technology to ensure constant communication and up-to-date technology, but this open environment can leave them vulnerable. So states will be looking to cybersecurity technologies to ensure that these cars don’t go off-track.

Interested in hearing about more trends and drivers affecting the SLED market? Come listen to my session on Fundamentals and Perspectives of Selling to SLED at the Government IT Sales Summit on Nov. 17.