The lack of a government shutdown or sequestration and the fact that most agencies had their appropriated dollars in place by the beginning of the calendar year made 2016 somewhat unremarkable when compared to previous years, according to Larry Allen of Allen Federal Business Partners.
However, Allen said there were some trends and opportunities of note when he spoke with EDGE360 and took a look back at 2016. Allen said that despite a lack of new funding, value-added resellers (VARs) and technology companies that looked were able to find opportunities in areas such as cybersecurity and cloud.
“2016 was a breakout year for cloud spending,” Allen said. “In prior years, the money hasn’t matched the hype, but 2016 looks to be a turning point as civilian agencies look to move more and more things into cloud.”
Allen also said he saw a shift from buying technology to “bolt onto” a legacy system to buying new solutions this year. “It is encouraging to see that more and more federal agencies want to make an investment in new technology because it bakes in security features that can’t be matched by bolting something onto an old system,” he explained.
Listen to Allen’s look back at 2016 here:
