Deloitte: Stimulus Offers VARs Three Prime Areas Of Opportunity

Goldstein joined Deloitte in 2003 after executive positions at Unisys and Arthur Andersen's Office of Government Services. Before that he worked in federal service positions, including as U.S. Assistant Comptroller General and COO at the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) -- now the Government Accountability Office -- and in leadership roles with what's now the Department of Health and Human Services.

With the $787 billion federal stimulus package promising to enable multitudes of opportunities for solution providers, Channelweb.com caught up with Goldstein this week to find out exactly where to look.

How can solution providers best position themselves to engage opportunities created by the stimulus? Where do they place their bets, in other words?

The federal stimulus funding, although generated directly to create jobs, is also targeted to a set of areas that are going to require resources and support for decades. If you step back from the jobs issue for just one microsecond, you immediately see that investments in energy-related technologies -- especially around the grid -- investments in automating medical services and records and anything around mass transit and also around highway-related systems would definitely be consistent with what Congress has approved. Those are the three areas I would be watching.

Let's take each of those three individually. How can a solution provider ready its practice to focus on energy opportunities?

For people who have any background in energy-related technologies, the stimulus package specifically supports two areas: construction and refurbishment of facilities that have clean or smart or sustainable energy needs. The bill actually provides standards with that, and if you go to the Department of Energy Web site, there's a whole part of the Web site focused on energy-efficient buildings and the EnergyStar program. Start there; clearly getting information in that source would enable a tech provider to see the opportunity.

The overall national transmission grid is made up of electric providers in each region -- the one I'm familiar with here in the Washington area is Pepco -- and there is money in the bill for providers to address security and reliability issues. It's been defined as a significant security issue. Our ability to assure that we'll have energy under extreme conditions is something that's addressed in the funding of the bill.

Another thing is that I don't think that people should view this as a kind of three-week emergency approach. Even though the bill had to be passed very quickly and the administration signed it, it's going to take months and months for various groups to put out plans. A number of departments, including Energy, are working on their plans on how to communicate what's specific and what's available. But the bill is very specific that competition will be encouraged.

Next: Solving Health-Care And Transportation Priorities Puzzles