American Technology Council Report Articulates Government IT Spending—Condusiv Weighs In
Burbank, CA (PRWEB) January 09, 2018 -- The recently released American Technology Council Report to the President on IT Modernization includes 50 recommendations aimed not only at modernizing the U.S. technology infrastructure, but also to strengthen cybersecurity, consolidate networks, and accelerate cloud adoption.1 “To fund these initiatives,” says James D’Arezzo, CEO of Condusiv Technologies, “the report tells agencies to prioritize systems for modernization and to reallocate resources.”
This directive, notes D’Arezzo, whose company is the world leader in I/O reduction solutions for virtual and physical server environments, represents the continuation of a 25-year initiative. The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 launched major changes in the procurement system and mandated government computing to focus on system performance, and not merely on compliance with arbitrary standards for configuration. As noted by political scientists William Gormley and Steven Balla, “The concept of performance came to rival accountability as a standard for evaluating executive branch agencies.”2
In the area of computer hardware, significant progress has been made since the 2015 Office of Management and Budget release of Category Management Policy 15-1: Improving the Acquisition and Management of Common Information Technology: Laptops and Desktops.3 The policy directs agencies to purchase laptop and desktop computers from three sources, NASA’s Solution for Enterprise-Wide Procurement, the General Services Administration’s IT Schedule 70, and the National Institutes of Health Information Technology Acquisition and Assessment Center.
Consolidation and demand management reportedly saved the government 23% on laptop and desktop purchases in 2016. However, funding of new IT modernization initiatives—both those in the report and those enacted by the Modernizing Government Technology Act as part of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act—is unclear. NDAA allocates $500 million for IT modernization, a drop in the $95+ billion IT budget.4
What does seem clear, D’Arezzo notes, is that new IT infrastructure purchases and upgrades in the past year, as well as those computers and servers already in place, will require management of IT performance and optimization. Money saved by redirecting unnecessary expenditures could fill budget deficits and provide needed optimization. The Modernizing Government Technology Act, for example, would provide funds for agencies to modernize and consolidate networks, embrace cloud computing, and enhance security—exactly as prescribed by the ATC report. The 2016 MEGABYTE Act directs agency CIOs to establish a comprehensive software license inventory and manage 80% of license spending and enterprise licenses with automated discovery tools. Beginning with the 2017 fiscal year, CIOs must report on the financial savings that has resulted from software license optimization.5
“Which is exactly what they need to be doing,” says D’Arezzo. “Software—the right software, properly used—is a key part of controlling government IT spend.” He continued to explain that Federal IT department heads and CIOs are, and will continue to be, under relentless pressure—from their own users, not from budget offices—to handle the staggering volume of SQL-related database computation resulting from big data and the Internet of Things.
As the world’s expert in this area, Condusiv has seen users of their software solutions more than double the I/O capability of storage and servers in their current configuration, whether real or virtual. Condusiv strongly encourages IT managers, especially those in government agencies under budgetary and performance pressure, to investigate what I/O reduction technology has to offer them.
About Condusiv® Technologies
Condusiv Technologies is the world leader in software-only storage performance solutions for virtual and physical server environments, enabling systems to process more data in less time for faster application performance. Condusiv guarantees to solve the toughest application performance challenges with faster-than-new performance via V-locity® for virtual servers or Diskeeper® for physical servers and PCs. With over 100 million licenses sold, Condusiv solutions are used by 90% of the Fortune 1000 and almost three-quarters of the Forbes Global 100 to increase business productivity and reduce data center costs while extending the life of existing hardware. Condusiv Chief Executive Officer Jim D’Arezzo has had a long and distinguished career in high technology.
Condusiv was founded in 1981 by Craig Jensen as Diskeeper Corporation. Jensen authored Diskeeper, which became the best-selling defragmentation software of all time. Over 33 years, he has taken the thought leadership in file system management and caching and transformed it into enterprise software. For more information, visit http://www.condusiv.com
1. Lynch, Morgan, “White House Modernization Report Stresses Cloud,” meritalk.com. August 31, 2017.
2. Gormley, William T. Jr., and Balla, Steven, Bureaucracy and Democracy: Accountability and Performance, Third Edition, CQ Press, 2012.
3. “Category Management Policy 15-1: Improving the Acquisition and Management of Common Information Technology: Laptops and Desktops,” M-16-02, Office of Management and Budget, October 16, 2015.
4. Pafe, Lisa, “IT modernization: Another step to contract consolidation,” Washington Technology, December 18, 2017.
5. Jesser, Tim, “3 tips for optimizing software spending,” GCN, December 6, 2017.
Karla Jo Helms, JoTo PR, http://www.jotopr.com, +1 888-202-4614 Ext: 802, [email protected]
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