Summing Up the Government IT Sales Summit

By Tim Larkins, Director, Market Intelligence

The 2018 immixGroup Government IT Sales Summit has come to an end. Despite an unwelcomed surprise from mother nature, hundreds of suppliers, partners, systems integrators and government employees flocked to the event to attend sessions, share knowledge and network. A diverse array of topics was discussed, and while content varied from room to room, many consistencies were noticeable.

Among them were government agencies’ imperatives for modernization, optimization and meaningful use of data. About half of the agencies are funded with new appropriations in FY19, with the other half on a CR through early December. Of the agencies with new money, most of them are seeing an uptick in their IT budgets – with which they will be purchasing COTS software and hardware to help them meet the aforementioned imperatives.

Now that funding is flowing, industry should prepare for a year of increased spending on those tools that advance modernization, optimization and data use: hyperconverged infrastructure, software defined networking, cloud computing, BI and analytics tools, relationship/workflow/financial management tools and identity access management and network visibility products.

Another message was delivered with consistency – that understanding customer needs prior to engaging and approaching the customer early in the cycle will improve chances of a successful sale. As always, the importance of the role of relationship development couldn’t have been more emphasized – and immixGroup’s Government IT Sales Summit was a perfect breeding ground for those developing relationships.

If you were unable to make it to the Government IT Sales Summit this year and are interested in viewing the sessions, on-demand video recordings will be available on or around December 10 on the immixGroup website.

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