http://strom.com/awards/363.html
VARs looking for new opportunities have known that the
federal government has been a big
source of funds, ideas, and opportunities over the past several years. And
being at the Federal Office Systems Expo show in Washington, DC this week
proved the point. I used to go to the FOSE shows when I last lived in DC back
in the Carter/Reagan years (Washingtonians refer to their time in town
dynastically, like the ancient Egyptians referred to their rulers), and I am
pleased to say that there is some life and excitement once again in our
industry.
It wasn't that the show was held in a brand-new convention
center, or that the floor was alive and crammed with booths and people. Or that
the show organizers had attracted big names like McNealy and Chambers to do the
keynotes. What got me excited was the brilliant opportunities for VARs and how
they could be found everywhere. I'll give you three examples of great
applications that I found at the show.
Take the company North American Access Technologies of
Hawthorne, NY as an example. They have this Mobile Emergency Data Center that
looks like a cross between an ambulance and a meat wagon. It is basically a hot
site on wheels: inside the truck are racks of equipment, UPS and a power
generator and enough room to stash gigabytes of storage. It can be outfitted
anyway you want and can serve as a mobile command center, a movable storage
facility for your files, or as an emergency data center. They are a perfect example of a VAR
that can assemble a truly unique product out of commonly available parts, to
serve critical needs for governments and even private clients that need to have
mobility and security and redundancy in a single package.
http://www.naat.com/Disaster%20Recovery/mobile_datacenter.htm
Another exciting idea is a joint solution that is being
sold by government integrator giant GTSI called STORM. You know how the
government likes its acronyms, and this one stands for Secure, Tough,
Online/Offline, Reliable and Mobile. (Too bad they didn't rearrange the
"r" and "o".) It is a combination of Panasonic's Toughbook
rugged laptops, Senforce's mobility and security software, and GTSI's
distribution savvy to meet the Defense Department's demand for commercial
wireless applications. In a nutshell, the military is looking for a few good
laptops, but they have to be able to turn off the wireless radios when security
needs demand for more circumspect communications. The DoD is concerned about
being able to prevent denial of service attacks as well as stop potential
interference from friendly sources. They want to be able to restrict wireless
transmissions in classified areas, and also be able to stop wireless
communications when laptops are connected to DoD-wired networks, as well as to
prevent their networks from being vulnerable from intruders who could gain
access to them via a wireless link.
You wouldn't want the enemy to sniff out where our army
users are by listening in on their wireless broadcasts, and hence the
government has come up with regulations to be able to switch their laptops from
chatty Cathys to more demure and encrypted ways to communicate, so nicely
called 8100.2 in DoD parlance. This is perhaps the first time someone is
interested in buying a Centrino laptop and wanting to turn off their radios.
What is nice about this STORM is that it again shows how
VARs (in this case GTSI) can bring together a total solution, again out of
commonly available piece parts but packaged in a way that makes sense, in this
case for protecting the data transmissions for our military. Senforce has
specialized software called Enterprise Mobile Security Manager that can handle
wide-area network security, end-point access, and policy enforcement for
laptops and remote users across the battlefield. Panasonic has battle-hardened
laptops that reduce the failure rate in the field: at the announcement
yesterday, their representatives were talking about an almost 90% failure rate
for ordinary commercial-grade laptops that were being used in the Middle East
and being returned for exposure to the harsh environments of the desert there.
The Panasonic Toughbooks had less than 15% return rate.
My last example is a bit more down to earth, and concern
of all parents of high-school aged children. The process of applying for
financial aid is hard enough, but the Department of Education with some help
from Accenture manages to make things a bit easier with its Student Aid on the Web
portal. On this site you have links to all kinds of resources, including
explanations on how to prepare for college, choosing the right type of aid
package, finding the right funding sources, and applying for the actual college
loans online. Seeing some of my friends with older kids go through this
process, I realize that parents need all the help they can get and the
Education Department is doing a terrific job making things easier.
These three were just the tip of many more that I ran into
at the show. And while it was nice to hear from McNealy and Chambers (both gave
their usual "stump speeches, slightly tailored for a government audience,
although Scott wasn't as funny as I have seen him and John looked like he had
been through too many time zones lately), the action on the floor shows that
VARs continue to innovate and find new and interesting ways to deliver IT
services and products to the government audience.
Entire
contents copyright 2004 by David Strom, Inc.
David
Strom, dstrom@cmp.com, +1 (516) 562-7151
Port
Washington NY 11050
Web
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