Arrow Helps With Fed Contracts

“IT spending in the federal government is too big to ignore from a distribution perspective,” said Rich Severa, president of the MOCA division of Arrow, at MOCA&s annual Net@Work conference in Santa Ana Pueblo, N.M., Monday.

In addition, the program offers market overviews, budget forecasts and spending analysis to help solution providers better qualify leads, he said.

“The more eyes you have in that area, the better the results are going to be, especially when you&re marketing specifically to the federal government,” said Mardi Norman, president of Dynamic Systems, Los Angeles. “With the government cycle, there&s short-term procurement, but you also have their governmentwide acquisition vehicles. You need to keep an eye on those a year in advance to get proper teaming, to get the right companies to work with.”

Severa said the program could help solution pro-viders struggling with decreasing margins resulting from belt-tightening by the federal government over the last six to nine months. “GSA pricing is the most aggressive you&ll find anywhere, but there&s real dollars there,” Severa said.

Some Sun Microsystems solution providers have expressed concern about shrinking margins from federal contracts.

“It is a Sun phenomenon but it&s also [an IT-wide] phenomenon. Some solution providers may find they don&t want to compete in the federal space anymore. In other circumstances, there may be more combining of businesses,” Severa said.

Later this quarter, Arrow will launch a Government Central Web site that includes up-to-date trends on federal, state, local and education markets, and it has expanded its relationship with Input, a market intelligence firm, to help identify new contract opportunities, Severa said.