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Certifiable
The first and perhaps most complicated step for newcomers to the government sector must do is to get certified as a government contractor. In order to make the process of selling to the government more streamlined and to help track where taxpayer money is going, the lawmakers have set up the General Services Administration (GSA; www.gsa.gov) that handles all of the buying for the government. Anybody who wants to sell anything to the federal government needs GSA approval. Web hosting and managed services fall into two different units - known as schedules - within the GSA.
The Federal Supply Service (FSS) handles the purchasing of all products the government might need. From airplanes to pencils, the FSS is in charge of approving orders for computer equipment and software applications.
"We do have hosting elements on the Federal Supply Services schedule, which includes things like space and certain levels of services, such as those we provide at our CyberCenters," says Wes Kaplow, chief technology officer for Qwest's Government Services Division, which has two datacenters in the Washington metro area and has the IRS and U.S. Treasury as customers.
Most hosting services, though, are covered by the Federal Technology Services (FTS) schedule. WorldCom (www.worldcom.com) and Sprint (www.sprint.com) share the master FTS contract for 2001 that covers most federal telecom services. Along with the main telecom contract, the federal government also awards Metro Area Acquisition (MAA) contracts for large-scale services in major cities.
Qwest, which holds four of these contracts, has found an elegant way to make use of government regulations that apply to specific distributed hosting services. The firm now offers a service dubbed managed federal hosting.
"There is an opportunity for MAA holders to offer emerging technology or other services to the GSA in so-called crossovers," says Kaplow, "so you go from a metro area to something you can do nation-wide."
Qwest's Crossover MAA FTS schedule is flexible enough to allow Qwest to construct most types of managed hosted services for the government, including hardware configuration, professional services, colocation space, and other services that combine hardware and service offerings.
Although working through GSA is the most efficient way to prequalify for bidding on government jobs, there are ways around getting a regular GSA certification. Akamai (www.akamai.com), which has been recently awarded a GSA schedule contract, has found that subcontracting to companies already in the GSA schedule also helps get the job done.
"One of our partners in working with the government is IBM," says Laura Stich, director of product marketing at Akamai, "and they've provided us with the ability to quickly and efficiently offer our services to government agencies, prior to our own GSA schedule award."
The Real Trick
Getting into the federal market space is only half of the fun. Staying on top of very different Washington agendas is the real ongoing challenge, as Akamai can attest.
Akamai's federal sales force went from zero to seven within the last year, as the content and applications distributor received requests and contracts from a number of different agencies seeking insight into the inner workings of the Internet.
What the government will do with this information is what makes the ongoing relationships with different agencies interesting, as Akamai seeks to build up services to accompany its alerts and raw performance information. Although analyzing the same data in different ways is a great source of revenue, avoiding getting caught by interagency politics is part of the art of doing business in Washington.
"Different agencies have different contexts," says Avi Freedman, Akamai chief network architect. "The CIA wants one thing; the FBI wants another. It's interesting how people have different agendas, and they are driven by different missions."
Navigating this maze can be made easier by joining forces with other vendors. To grow its power base in the city, Akamai has joined forces with two: the Information Technology Association of America (www.itaa.org) and the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (www.afcea.org). If contracting with Uncle Sam is something your firm is considering, similar vendors are a good place to start.
This article is written by Max Smetannikov for HostingTech, a web hosting magazine, and he can be contacted at msmetannikov@hostingtech.com
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