OnPoint’s Shankar Pillai: Federal IT trends to watch
From new budgets to the appointment of a first-ever federal CIO, the pressure’s on for IT companies to anticipate what’s next in the federal IT arena. Anticipating those trends is something Shankar Pillai knows all about. As CEO of OnPoint, a government IT services firm that specializes in infrastructure, systems development, and information assurance, Shankar has been working in the federal IT space for nearly 15 years. Here Pillai weighs in on possible avenues the government might take on the technology front and how contractors can offer the most value.
Obama has touted energy efficiency among government agencies. What tech solutions do you see on the horizon?
Shankar Pillai: The federal government is the largest user of energy in the U.S., and energy costs are a significant factor in total IT costs, driving a movement to “Green IT.” Unfortunately, data centers are inefficient by nature; they use a tremendous amount of energy to power servers and cool the facility. Also, servers are costly to maintain and typically underutilized. While a lot of people are talking about cloud computing, that appears to be a long-term strategy. The near-term strategies are data center consolidation and server virtualization, which enable agencies to reduce personnel, facility, equipment, and energy costs.
Where are you seeing server virtualization play out?
Shankar Pillai: Virtualization allows agencies to operate more efficiently by maximizing server utilization and reducing the physical number of boxes needed to maintain level of service. Most agencies are — or plan to engage in — virtualization to some degree. OnPoint is implementing virtualization for several of our customers using software like VMware, which actually creates virtual servers on one physical box.
What opportunities would a federal shift to cloud computing present the commercial sector?
Shankar Pillai: Cloud computing shifts the costs (and risks) of building and maintaining the computing infrastructure to the cloud provider. Essentially, it outsources the data center function and enables agencies to pay for software or computing power as a service. But the reality is that due to security concerns, many government agencies are reluctant to outsource their processing to commercial organizations. As an example, one of our customers, Treasury’s Financial Management Service (FMS) processes more than a billion financial transactions a year; FMS is unlikely to outsource that computing infrastructure to a commercial cloud provider. In my opinion, opportunities do exist for companies that have the capability and experience implementing cloud infrastructure to help agencies build and enhance their own infrastructure.
Everyone’s hearing about the push to make public information available online via data.gov. How can IT companies position themselves for relevance?
Shankar Pillai: Obviously, marketing to agencies is as important as ever, since most of the data is currently only available at the agency level. As a service provider, you must have expertise in data warehousing, ETL, XML, XBRL, GIS and similar data manipulation techniques.
What’s next for OnPoint?
Shankar Pillai: Well, OnPoint is no longer a small business; we’re projecting revenues of about $50 million in 2009. As we move into the full and open space, it requires greater investment to compete effectively. As an example, we’ve invested in our own CTO — just like the federal government — to help drive OnPoint’s technology focus and assess where the government is going and where we can offer new value.
Bringing on board a CTO is atypical for a company of your size. What was the catalyst?
Shankar Pillai: We’ve considered making an investment in a CTO for the past year. At our annual strategic planning session in January, our leadership team was unanimous in agreeing that we were ready for it. We’re constantly looking for new ways to stay on top of our game; providing the same services as everyone else has never been enough.
Any last bit of advice for companies in the federal IT space?
Shankar Pillai: Something Wayne Gretzky once said comes to mind. When asked why he was so successful, Gretzky replied, “I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”
Read more interviews here: http://blog.executivebiz.com/category/interviews/
Posted by Staff Writer
on Friday, April 10th, 2009. Filed under Executive Spotlight.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
