Are VARS Ready for the Growth of AI, IoT, and Cybersecurity Opportunities in the Public Sector?

Each year, the Editors of EDGE360 analyze the potential public sector trends that will impact the channel. At the recent Comstor Executive Federal Summit, speakers from Comstor, SYNNEX, Cisco, and Federal Budget IQ all touched on the emerging trends and growing opportunities that may impact Value-Added Resellers (VARs) in the near future. Cybersecurity, AI, and IoT seemed to top the lists of opportunities. To further explore these trends, the EDGE360 team consulted content from the experts at Cisco.

Secure Collaboration

A main public sector priority this year is end-to-end cybersecurity, specifically in collaboration. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) recently migrated to the cloud which made those working in the channel increasingly aware of the need for a system that “protects and defends” while “connecting and achieving.”

To make this possible, the team at Cisco has begun certifying more products than any other IT company to meet U.S. Federal government requirements, developing more software-as-a-service (SaaS) opportunities, and designing products and cloud services to work in a multi-cloud hybrid state. These changes are important for VARs selling to the public sector as better data security no longer means less functionality.

Read more here.

Smart Cities

VARs looking to sell to the public sector should familiarize themselves with smart city technology – one of the biggest trends for the upcoming year. Smart cities will begin to see a shift from large metropolitan areas to communities of all sizes, creating more sales opportunities. Driven by the Internet of Things (IoT) and WiFi, smart city capabilities are available in more rural areas.

VARs interested in smart cities must take a human-centric approach. The smart city isn’t just about the technology, but what it can do for the humans in that city. With emerging technologies, smart communities can provide a better quality of life that is secure and empowers the economy.

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Comply to Connect

Commercial vendors often fall flat when attempting to support the DoD. To start successfully, VARs should first ask themselves “What do defense agencies want from technology vendors?”

There are three main answers: To leverage security investments they already own; to increase automated capabilities; and to get industry vendors working together to deliver solutions to protect the mission. To help VARs address these, Cisco has built the pXgrid, an open security architecture promoting industry collaboration and partnerships.

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The Fourth Industrial Revolution

“The Fourth Industrial Revolution is a new beast: Progressing at a faster and more aggressive pace than any of the prior three revolutions,” Arvind Satyam, Managing Director, Global Business Development at Cisco. “This revolution is characterized by oceans of big data, the rise of autonomous machines and robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, distributed ledger, and the Internet of Things. The sheer speed of innovation and rapid adoption of new technologies pushes traditional government to its limits: Today’s governments must be more data-driven, people-focused, and agile than ever before. But what does agility mean in terms of government?”

For VARs, agility means enabling governments to be “future-savvy” by providing proactive technology that enhances the mission.

Read more here.