Carleton Jones, recently profiled in Top 20 People to Watch, became President of INDUS Corp mid-November. He will continue to serve as Vice Chairman, a position he has held since May of this year. He was formerly the CEO of Multimax, bought last year by Harris Corp for $400 million, as well as former President of VanStar Government Systems, Inc. and Sysorex Information Systems, Inc. Settling into his new position, Jones offers us a glimpse into his future growth plans for this fast-growing company.

In assuming your new role as President what new directions will you take INDUS Corp?

Carleton Jones: We are not going to be heading in new directions, but we are going to be more aggressive in capitalizing on the company’s many strengths – including its superlative performance record and technical depth and savvy – to extend INDUS’ reach as a prime contractor across the federal customer base.

How will INDUS stay competitive in today’s markets?

Carleton Jones: INDUS will maintain a competitive edge by continuing to focus on developing and delivering highest-standard, competitively priced IT solutions and services responsive to the mission-critical requirements of Federal organizations.  IT is a key driver in the delivery of enhanced government services representing best value to taxpayers.  Government use of IT resources acquired from the private sector is a compelling proposition in an era of dramatically mounting budget deficits, civil service retirements, staff assignments to expeditionary billets, and increasing technical complexity.  INDUS is well-positioned to meet government requirements for these IT resources.

What are the projected revenues for 2008 and how do you think 2009 will look like?

Carleton Jones: As a privately held company, we do not publicize our financial results, but let me tell you that our solid performance during 2008 and our growth prospects for next year put us in the neighborhood of $100 million in revenues for 2009.

Any prospects for acquisitions in 2009?

Carleton Jones: We do not have any specific acquisitions under consideration at this time, but we continue to review opportunities and are prepared to move forward at such time as we identify a potential acquisition candidate that would strengthen INDUS in terms of core capabilities, customer base and/or geographic presence.

What is the single most exciting thing most people don’t know about your company?

Carleton Jones: Here is one such exciting thing:  From its inception, INDUS has had a focus on Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Geospatial Solutions.  One of our earliest projects was to create digital maps of 2,000 cities around the world for an R.R. Donnelly company called GeoSystems.  GeoSystems was spun off into a different company and was then acquired by AOL for $1 billion for its most famous product – MapQuest!  INDUS continues to have a very successful practice providing Geospatial/Actionable Intelligence solutions.

Ask anyone in the VAR market to name their top business concerns, and you’ll probably hear things like: staying up to date with technology, winning new business, recruiting and retention, and keeping an eye out for managed services opportunities. For Ed Jones, senior vice president of DLT Solutions, a value-added reseller of IT products and services in Herndon, Va., it’s all in a day’s work. Recently, Jones shared the latest developments at DLT — the introduction of a corporate business development unit, along with expanded reach into the intelligence community and state and local business — as well as insights on how his team brings fast, flexible response service to its vendor partners and public sector and higher education customers.

What led you to DLT?

Ed Jones: Besides the 20-plus years that I spent in the Marine Corps, I also have extensive experience in the aerospace, defense and information technology industries.  I was with Rockwell International, an aerospace company, before joining Operations Research, Inc. (ORI), a small Washington-based consulting firm.  After a few acquisitions and mergers, I became president of Atlantic Research Corporation, which was acquired by CSC in 1994. Then I cofounded my own company, EMSI.  After 12 years of consulting in the public sector, EMSI was acquired by one of our top clients, DLT Solutions, Inc.  And here I am now, senior vice president of DLT Solutions, Inc.

What are your biggest challenges in the VAR business?

Ed Jones: The ever changing IT landscape within the public sector.  Every government agency — federal, state, local — is trying to become first-class IT providers to their constituencies.  And technology is moving fast, making it harder for agencies to keep up.  As part of our mission, we try to stay ahead of it so we can translate it to our government customers and therefore, be fast, flexible and responsive to their growing needs.  Doing all of that and helping our government customers stay within their tightening budgets is  challenging.

What are you doing to stay competitive as an IT provider?

Ed Jones: Web 2.0 is an area that the government is using to meet their constituents’ needs.  We have new partners who are dedicated to offering products and services to make the transition to Web 2.0 easier for our customers, making government more interactive with the people over the internet.  That’s exciting.  We also are expanding our open source architecture practice.  We were already the largest government partner to Red Hat, the largest enterprise Linux provider.  Now, we are adding partners such as Zenoss, which provides an open source IT management solution.

What’s something most people are surprised to learn about DLT?

Ed Jones: I think all of our partners are pleasantly surprised by our marketing capabilities.  We’re a lead generation machine with the statistical data to show results from every angle.  Like many sales organizations, our marketing team generates leads.  We have hundreds of marketing activities with millions of customer touches that lead to thousands of opportunities.  Those opportunities become thousands of qualified prospects, who then become hundreds of quotes and ultimately millions of dollars in wins.  All traceable back to the original marketing event.  I think also that our partners and our customers are always impressed by our back-office: our order management, contracts and accounting functions.

How has your Marine background helped you in business?

Ed Jones: That’s a good question.  My Marine Corps background helps me in everything I do, in my business and personal life.  It gave me discipline, focus and the ability to work as part of a team.  Being part of the Marine Corps meant you were among the best.  Since then, I have learned how to recognize the best companies and have sought to become a part of them.

What’s something most people don’t know about you personally?

Ed Jones: I spent a lot of time in the Far East early in my business career.  I was in Beijing when President Carter announced the normalization of diplomatic relations with China.  On the day it was announced, I met with Deng Xiaoping, then the de facto leader of China.  We had a magnificent day, and we became old friends.

What’s the best part of your job at DLT?

Ed Jones: Working with our young workforce.  It is really fun to work with these young, bright people.  We learn a lot from each other.

Are you organizationally challenged? It’s not easy to juggle multiple projects, oversee teams, and stay resilient in the midst of tough economic times. To ring in 2009 — and up the odds you’ll be productive this coming year — we asked David Allen, author of Getting Things Done, for tips on staying on track. Allen’s organizational system — also called Getting Things Done (GTD) — has a simple premise: Address with what can be addressed immediately, schedule what can be dealt with later, and toss the rest. “It’s about defining what your commitments actually are; most people don’t have a clue,” Allen tells us. For more tips, read on.

What makes us feel out of control?

David Allen: We all do emergency scanning from time to time but most people are living in an emergency scan mode.  You’re just waiting for the fire and crisis to show up and then you’ll follow the latest loudest thing — that’s why people are feeling so out of control.  They haven’t executed a real executive execution process before crisis mode hits.

The doom-and-gloom headlines trigger their share of fear. Any tips on fear management?

David Allen: Everybody — certainly executives — need to keep two things in mind: control and perspective.  In terms of control, the first thing you do is make sure you know what an empty inbox looks like and how to organize it. In other words, you better get control of what you can get control of so that you can navigate the stuff that you can’t control as it comes at you. Once you regain control — and get beyond survival mode — then the issue becomes, What’s my focus now? What’s my perspective?  Should I be focused on where I want to be five years from now?  Should I be focused on a contingency plan?

What other things can executives do to maintain control?

David Allen: Most executives have between 30 and 100 projects. Things like getting new tires on their car, hiring a new assistant, restructuring their finance department, looking into a new cell phone service, managing the board meeting coming up — all of those count as projects, by my definition.  What usually has people feeling most out of control is that inventory is not defined, not delineated and not current for them to evaluate their obligations on a regular basis.

How can executives put obligations in working order?

David Allen: To start, you need to capture the information. Write everything down that is on your mind.  Then call your answering machine and just unload. Once you’ve captured all of the raw data then you need to come back through all that stuff and ask yourself,  Is this something that I’m committed to move on or not — yes or no? If it is something you are committed to move on then you need to answer two critical questions: 1) What outcome am I committed to seeing through? 2) What is the very next action step I need to take to move closer to completion?  So, outcome and action are the ultimate two questions to ask.

Prioritizing sounds like a time-consuming task.

David Allen:  Sure, your first time, it might take one to six hours to capture all the things that have your attention and then it will take a few more hours to go through all that stuff and actually define all of the projects pulling or tugging on you.  Because I have done an inventory so many times, it would take me about 30 seconds.

Any final thoughts on getting things done in tough economic times?

David Allen: Keeping up when things turn down is the time you can grow the most. In an upmarket nobody wants to change. It’s when the heat’s on — how many investment banks are left by the way?  If you are looking for someone to do your IPO, I’m sorry this is where Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are going to come out in spades.  Why do you think Warren Buffet is buying stocks now?  If you can make it through, it will test the mettle of everybody.  None of us like to have our mettle tested.  We all like to have had it tested for us.

With major acquisitions in the government IT space under its belt, QinetiQ North America has left its mark as a leading defense technology company for U.S. government clients. Frank Kist is working to keep the momentum going. As the new CIO of QinetiQ North America, Kist oversees the integration of six major acquisitions. “To date they’ve run their businesses separately and the common infrastructure has not been centralized … so that’s my focus now,” Kist tells ExecutiveBiz. As part of integration Kist is looking at cost savings and cost avoidance initiatives to consolidate and upgrade the infrastructure. “We are consolidating the finance systems, email, active directory, and file servers, and taking all of the separate public websites and consolidating all of them onto one set of servers,” he adds. In the following Q&A, Kist shares the latest on his new role and what’s ahead in the areas of cybersecurity, acquistions, and the area’s IT job market.

Briefly tell us about your background and your role with QinetiQ North America.

Frank Kist: I’ve been in IT for my entire career. Before QinetiQ North America, I was CIO at SRA International. Before that I was an ACIO at the IRS and I’ve been in Fortune 100 companies: Time Warner, EMI Music, Calvin Klein Cosmetics and IBM, where I began my career.

What does a good CIO have to do in this current marketplace?

Frank Kist: I think the biggest thing is being able to understand the business needs. It’s not technology and feeds and widgets anymore. It’s really about understanding the business requirements and finding the best ways to provide solutions in an environment where you can also manage it more effectively.
Read the rest of this entry »

NetApp is a leading storage provider to the federal government, and Mark Weber is part of the reason why. As president and general manager for NetApp’s U.S. Public Sector (which includes federal, state and local, and K-12), Mark Weber helps steer the data management company toward greater heights.  “Not only do we sell storage, we offer value added software that manages all of that data, says Weber. “To be number one you have to be selling into civilian, DOD and Intel … we do very well on all fronts,” he says. Here Mark Weber shares a few of his best practices and also weighs in on green initiatives.

You are obviously in a very competitive space, what is your basic approach to business?

Mark Weber: We believe that we are a piece of the IT solution.  When you sell one piece of the business, which in our case is storage, you’ve got to have a lot of “friends” —there are servers, there’s integration and there are a lot of other pieces to the solution. It’s all about partners and delivering those products to the end customers.  We create the demand at the end-user level; so our go-to market approach is not just to have our partners create the demand.  We also have 70 sales reps who are tasked with creating the demand with the end user team.
Read the rest of this entry »

As Vice President and Geographic Sales Leader for EDS, an HP company’s U.S. Public Sector business, Andy McCann is responsible for growth within the company. “I lead our sales organization and work to ensure that we bring the best value propositions to our federal, state and local government clients and prospects in the areas of applications development, IT outsourcing, and business process outsourcing,” says McCAnn. Here, he shares his thoughts on growth and the importance of cultivating ties with your existing customer base.

You’re a Washington, D.C. native and have been with the company since 1988. What keeps you grounded with EDS?

Andy McCann: The Washington area is a great place to live and raise a family.  I’ve been fortunate to have worked with so many great people throughout my entire career at EDS, which has made a huge positive difference during my years with the company. Also, the diverse business mix that EDS serves across global industries has given me a broad base of experience that has proven to be both valuable and personally rewarding.
Read the rest of this entry »

Before he ever joined Sun, Anthony Robbins worked in the government sector for 20 years — and learned the importance of delivering on a solution versus just a product. Today, as vice president of federal sales for Sun Microsystems, Robbins continues that focus. “The government is thin in a lot of ranks, and so an important component for companies like ours is to figure out how to package the people, the talent and the expertise that they have … in a way that can be brought to the government market and add value to the mission,” says Robbins. In the following Q&A, Robbins shares some of the challenges and opportunities he’s encountered since assuming his role in July 2006, and lets us in on what’s next for this $14 billion company.

How have recent economic challenges affected your sales strategy?

Anthony Robbins: Obviously, the government will have to wrestle with a recession, the  national economy, the US position in the world market, a change of administration, a war going on, etc.  At the same time the products and services that Sun offers as a world class computer company are generally set to increase productivity and increase efficiency of people and organizations.  So a lot of times people will come to companies such as Sun during times like this to figure out how they can improve efficiencies and improve productivity, which in many cases can be opportunities even during trying times.  Our view is that the federal market is an opportunity in the current times.

Read the rest of this entry »

As president of CNSI, a high-technology services company based in Rockville, Md., B. Chatterjee knows all about managing growth. Since his company’s start in 1994, CNSI has grown quickly while developing long-term relationships with key public sector clients. In the following Q&A, Chatterjee debriefs on the infrastructure, processes and procedures needed to deliver value to customers. He also discusses charities close to his heart, and his personal prescription for developing the discipline needed to maintain executive success.

What’s going on with CNSI today?

B. Chatterjee: Corporate growth is the constant. Growth both in profitability and revenue, but more importantly, growth in hiring the right management and technical talent to support our clients.  Now that we have achieved critical mass — and demonstrated success — it has become easier to attract strong performers to be part of our winning team. As a services company, it’s all about having the right management and technical resources, and this has helped fuel our growth.

We continue to have success in the healthcare industry, and the same thing holds true on the federal side.  Having completed several large projects has allowed us to capture addition contracts in these markets.  Our success is all about adding value to the customer.  For instance, with the U.S. Census Bureau, we participated in the last census.  We provided not only our technology skills, but also our subject matter expertise, and this has led to additional opportunities.  Same thing holds true with other clients like the Department of Energy.  We’ve been supporting them for the past seven years, and now we have opportunities to support their enterprise architecture, and other initiatives that cut across their entire enterprise.
Read the rest of this entry »

Ever since Vivek Kundra was appointed Chief Technology Officer for the District of Columbia by Mayor Adrian Fenty in March 2007, he and his team have been leading the way in innovation. Kundra coined the phrase, “digital public square,” which stands at the heart of his efforts to engage citizens and make government services more effective, accessible, and transparent through online innovation. The results speak for themselves. In 2008, InfoWorld Magazine named Kundra among its “CTO 25” — 25 senior IT leaders from government, nonprofits, and private industry. These days, Kundra is also helping President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team come up with new ideas for leveraging technology. Kundra recently sat down with ExecutiveBiz to share some of his team’s latest innovations — and what’s on the horizon as CTO of the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO), an organization of over 600 staff that provides technology services and leadership for 86 agencies, 38,000 employees, residents, businesses, and millions of visitors.

Tell us about the “Apps for Democracy” contest you created in Washington, D.C.

Vivek Kundra: The Apps for Democracy contest is part of our drive toward digital democracy. Especially in these difficult economic times, it’s crucial to the government’s mission to find more efficient and impactful methods for delivering an even higher level of service for a fraction of the cost.  DC Government’s Apps for Democracy contest was held over the course of a month this fall as a part of our effort to find innovative technologies and engage citizens in what we like to call the “digital public square.”

Making government data public was one of my key priorities; by organizing the vast stores of data on every aspect of government operations — from government contracts to crime statistics to economic development — into convenient catalogs and 200 live data feeds, this new democratization of government data now puts citizens in the driver’s seat. Once the data went public, we noticed that individuals and organizations were not only viewing our data, but were actually improving upon our work by analyzing and repurposing the information in useful ways.

One innovative DC resident took it upon herself to aggregate government data on service requests, crimes, and building and public space permit applications to create an online information clearinghouse for her own neighborhood. Thanks to her, neighbors can use her site to track economic and real estate developments in their own backyard. I wanted to leverage the talents and interests of our technologically-savvy citizens to create some real public value, at a fraction of the cost.

The contest, which was open to the public, invited technology developers across the nation to compete in creating applications for popular consumer technologies like the iPhone, Facebook, Map Mashups, and others using data from our online data catalog. The very first submission, submitted 24 hours from the contest kickoff, was from an individual who created a location-aware iPhone application that can identify the locations of crime incidents in the surrounding area, as well as tell the user where the nearest Metro station is and the time of arrival for the next train. Overall, we were thrilled with the results — the Apps for Democracy contest brought us 47 applications in a matter of 30 days, with an investment of $50,000. Had we pursued these technologies through the traditional procurement method, we would have spent millions of taxpayer dollars and the process would have taken years.

Read the rest of this entry »

As a 26-year veteran of the telecommunications industry, Michael Heath has pretty much seen it all. “I started just before the divestiture of the Bell System, so I’ve seen all the changes over the past 20-plus years,” says Heath. Having worked for large corporations such as Qwest and several small start-ups, Heath came on board AT&T this past year and soon became vice president of sales for AT&T Government Solutions — a unit with 4,000 employees that’s solely dedicated to meeting the needs of the federal government. As he wraps up his first year with AT&T, Heath fills us in on how he’s shaping an integrated sales force to address the mission-critical needs of the federal government.

You’re new to the Federal space. Tell us a little about what you have found so far.

Michael Heath: Two things. First of all, I have been impressed and amazed at just how much thought leadership there is for IT with the federal agency customers I’ve been calling on in this space. I have encountered very forward-thinking CIOs looking for the next best idea for putting together a network or a security solution. I’ve been very impressed with their long-term planning on both fronts. Second of all, the amount of time and investment that agencies are putting into the IT space — they are taking a very sophisticated approach. Being new to the federal segment, I wasn’t sure what to expect there, but what we’re doing here in the federal segment certainly rivals my experience working with the Fortune 500 and is, in some cases, much more sophisticated.

What top priorities do you work on daily?

Michael Heath: I’m working with our customers to help them shape their thinking and decide what their network strategy will be. There are a lot of statements of work out there for Networx, the GSA’s 10-year, $20 billion contract vehicle that allows AT&T and others to provide a full range of telecommunications and related network services to federal government agencies, that we are involved in right now. Over the past three months, we’ve been very busy responding to those SOWs by sending proposals to customers, etc. AT&T has been very successful with Networx — for example, AT&T has announced more than $700 million in Networx awards with customers such as the Department of the Treasury, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Read the rest of this entry »