3 Public Resources You Need to Prepare for Meeting With DOD

December 30, 2020 by Leave a comment

By Toné Mason, Senior Analyst

Abraham Lincoln once said, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Investing time in being prepared prior to meeting with a government contact is vital — especially if you are diving into new departments and agencies within the DOD. Here are 3 top public resources at your disposal – and they are free!

Read more of this post

Filed under Army, Market Intelligence, Sales Tagged with , , , , , ,

Winners in the FY21 Defense Budget Request

March 19, 2020 by Leave a comment

By Toné Mason, Senior DOD Analyst

The President is requesting $705.4B in DOD funding for FY21, which is a modest 0.1% increase from FY20. The biggest winner by far is U.S. Space Force, but there are still plenty of opportunities across DOD and the services for IT vendors.

Announced in FY20, funding for Space Force in FY21 is largely focused on providing funding for the establishment of the organization as a whole. More details regarding metrics and objectives are anticipated to be further developed over the next few years. From what we know at this time, automation, infrastructure, cyber and data analytics are anticipated to be key areas of interest for them.

Here’s a summary of DOD budget highlights for FY21. Read more of this post

Filed under Market Intelligence, Sales Tagged with , , , , , , ,

AI and Analytics: Must Haves for Our Naval Force

April 3, 2019 by Leave a comment

Lloyd McCoy Jr.

By Lloyd McCoy, Marketing Intelligence Manager

There’s a real sense of urgency in the Navy.

Increasingly, at conferences (most recently at AFCEA West) and in sidebar conversations, I hear maritime leaders talk about “Great Power Competition” and how we’ve reached an inflection point in terms of how dispersed our fleet can reasonably be while maintaining effectiveness with current capabilities.

The mantra “do more with less” has been around since time immemorial but there’s a widespread belief that while the U.S. military will always have the advantage in air, land and sea, artificial intelligence (AI) looks to be an equalizer. There’s also the belief that we are only at the beginning of the adoption and development cycle for AI.

How do you fight a war against an adversary that can predict what you are going to do before you even know? Ladies and gentlemen, we are in an AI arms race. Read more of this post

Filed under Market Intelligence, Sales Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

OTAs and Cloud: Hot Topics at AFCEA WEST

March 12, 2019 by 1 Comment

By Mark Wisinger, Senior Analyst

AFCEA West is the most happening event on the Navy IT circuit. The sunny San Diego weather draws a big crowd every February and it’s an excellent place to talk shop, learn about the latest Navy and Marine Corps trends and opportunities and soak up the California sun – despite the rain this year!

Here are a couple top-level trends I noticed during the conference:

OTAs are red hot
It seems not a month goes by without new OTA’s popping up. While the Navy did not announce a new other-transactional-authority vehicle, it did announce that within the next week or two, we’d see requests for cloud and networking through the Information Warfare Research Project (IWRP) OTA. We’re seeing the Navy continue to ramp up OTA usage and grow more comfortable with the OTA acquisition process.

NAVAIR appears to be the most popular Navy cloud broker
Each Navy systems command is in varying stages of maturing their cloud-broker offering for the rest of the department. But, it appears that NAVAIR’s AWS GovCloud environment is the most popular choice right now. The Navy cloud broker model is rather interesting, given the JEDI competition and DOD CIO Dana Deasy’s mandate to consolidate as much of DOD cloud purchasing through the JEDI cloud vehicle as possible. Read more of this post

Filed under Contracting, Marketing, Sales Tagged with , , , , ,

Yes, the Public Sector Is Embracing IoT!

October 26, 2018 by Leave a comment

By Tim Larkins, director, market intelligence

Most analysts agree that by 2021, over 20 billion Internet-connected devices worldwide will make up a market for the Internet of Things (IoT) worth over $2.5 trillion. That means a huge market opportunity for vendors providing technology at every point — from the user device to the platform itself.

In a nutshell, IoT allows devices to link and exchange data. It’s not a discrete technology like business applications or infrastructure or even cybersecurity. It’s more like a wrapper around all other technologies and is comprised of five major elements:

  • The Edge: The devices, nodes and sensors actually collecting data
  • The Gateway: Either a physical device or software that allows data to flow from the edge to the platform
  • The IoT Platform: The operating environment, storage, computing power and development tools that receive data from the gateway
  • Software Applications: Programs that let users solve business problems, working with data stored in the IoT platform
  • Cybersecurity: The tools that protect all the nodes/sensors/devices at the edge and data transmitted through the gateway, platform, all the way to the user

Read more of this post

Filed under Market Intelligence, Sales, SLED Tagged with , , , , , , ,

OTAs Are Heating Up in the DOD

August 15, 2018 by 1 Comment

Mark Wisinger_100x135By Mark Wisinger, senior analyst

Every program manager and acquisition professional in DOD has been leveraging the newest buzzword: OTA, which stands for Other Transaction Authority. OTAs have been in the acquisition arsenal for years, but Congress just recently relaxed rules and restrictions on their use, paving the way for OTAs to be the new hot method for rapid technology insertion and piloting. The Office of the Undersecretary of Acquisition and Sustainment recently has been working on an OTA handbook to help guide DOD acquisition professionals on the do’s and don’ts of this newly revitalized procurement method. It’s no surprise we’re starting to see the use of more and more OTAs.

According to Bloomberg Government, DOD accounted for $2.1B of $2.3B spent through OTAs in 2017. The Army has been a leader in DOD driving most of the OTA usage increases to date, concentrated in the Army Materiel Command, although the Army Cyber Command’s use of OTAs is growing. The Defensive Cyber Operations office, within Army’s PEO EIS is setting up a new OTA vehicle known as C-RAPID, which will be targeting rapid piloting and insertion of defensive cyber tools. Companies that sign on to the consortium will field between 6 and 24 Army technology requests a year for defensive cyber tools.

Read more of this post

Filed under Contracting, Market Intelligence, Sales Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

How and where to do business in the Navy: Part I

April 18, 2017 by 1 Comment

Lloyd McCoy Jr.

By Lloyd McCoy, DOD manager

One of the biggest priorities of the Trump administration is a boost to the Department of Defense budget, specifically a substantial expansion of the Navy’s fleet. While a detailed FY18 budget is forthcoming, Navy commanders and program managers have recently been vocal about their priorities.

In this two-part series, I’ll break down the major insertion points within Navy and the Marine Corps and highlight what matters to the tech community, specifically the major drivers for IT spending through FY18.

First, let’s explore some of the commands and program offices that handle everything from aviation to information warfare.

Read more of this post

Filed under Market Intelligence, Sales Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Navy Operations Fueled by Data

June 21, 2016 by Leave a comment

Stephanie Meloni_65x85NavyOperations_062116By Stephanie Meloni, Consultant

The Navy is launching two new ventures that will produce significant opportunities for networking, infrastructure, and ultimately, big data and analytics tech companies. With Task Force Cyber Awakening, the organization used an agile, collaborative effort to help the Navy adapt quickly to cyber challenges; and now it’ll be using the same approach to help the organization become more interoperable.

Read more of this post

Filed under Market Intelligence, Sales Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

3 Ways Industry Can Help Government Cloud Adoption

May 3, 2016 by Leave a comment

Lloyd McCoy Jr.By Lloyd McCoy Jr., DOD Manager

If you attended our recent Cloud Briefing & GCloud Briefing 41216-3overnment Panel, you likely heard a recurring message from the federal leaders who spoke: They need help from industry.

Moving to the cloud has been a bigger challenge than expected as summed up by Office of the DOD CIO cloud lead Robert Vietmeyer, who spoke on our government panel: “This stuff is hard. Leadership is bought into your marketing pitch,” he told attendees, largely representing cloud providers. “We all want better, faster, cheaper. We just found it’s more difficult to get from where we are today to where we all want to be.”

Read more of this post

Filed under Contracting, Market Intelligence Tagged with , , , , , , , , , ,

Navy Creating Waves of Change in IT Security, Infrastructure, and Mobility

December 29, 2014 by Leave a comment

Tsunami1
Lloyd McCoy_65x85by Lloyd McCoy Jr., Consultant

Recently I attended an AFCEA luncheon with Janice Haith, the deputy CIO for the Navy; her remarks provided valuable insights on where the Navy stands with IT reform, specifically in the areas of security, infrastructure, and mobility. From possibly doing away from NIPRNET to challenges in consolidation efforts, I thought I would share some highlights with you:

Read more of this post

Filed under Market Intelligence, Sales Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

← Older posts

%d bloggers like this: