FITARA - Category Management

Category management is an approach the Federal Government is applying to buy smarter and more like a single enterprise. Category management enables the government to eliminate redundancies, increase efficiency, and deliver more value and savings from the government’s acquisition programs. Additional information on Category Management can be found on GSA’s website here.

The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) was passed by Congress in December 2014. This law represents the first major overhaul of Federal Information Technology in almost 20 years. OMB has published guidance to agencies to ensure that the law is applied. Additional information regarding FITARA can be found here.

In today’s mobile environment, data-centric security must be added to the fabric of an agency’s cybersecurity protocol. The Adobe Category Management Data Centric Security Offering delivers a datacentric security solution allowing federal agencies to flex with the operations tempo, address immediate security concerns and even predict future threats.

The Adobe Electronic Signature offering (Adobe Sign) allows government agencies to transform paper processes, making digital workflows a reality with trusted and legal e-signatures. Adobe Sign supports the government initiatives (OMB Circular A-130, Government Paperwork Elimination Act [GPEA] and the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act [E-SIGN]) to move towards an ‘electronic government’ and will also help cut costs and improve productivity.

Carahsoft and Adobe’s Category Management Offering allow the Government to:

• Protect high-value assets and sensitive information
• Provide a Digital Rights Management (DRM) capability to enable data level protection
• Help preve
  nt unauthorized review, redistribution and modification of sensitive government information
• Sign documents digitally anytime and from anywhere

Additional information can be found here:

• Information Protection with Adobe
• Adobe Sign Overview
• GSA & Adobe to Deliver Streamlined Data Security, Electronic Signature Solutions for Government

Click here to view the FITARA solution bundles and discounts available through Adobe and Carahsoft.

For more information, please contact:

Jenna Hafey
703-871-8561
jenna.hafey@carahsoft.com

Dell EMC provides many capabilities and options to assist Federal Government Information Technology departments in addressing the many aspects of the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) as well as the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA).

To assist the Federal Government in addressing FDCCI and improving FITARA compliance, federal agencies must continue to modernize and to modernize the data center. We believe that there are four foundational pillars or attributes that must be in place to deliver results via the Modern Data Center:

1. Flash Based – Flash based storage reduces the number of drives required to deliver greater performance, which in turn dramatically reduces the cost of delivering consistent and predictable low-latency performance. The reduction in drives would help contribute to part of the FDCCI and FITARA initiatives to reduce floor space, power consumption, and cooling requirements needed to deliver day-to-day storage services. The economics have approached an inflection point, as increasing capacities and decreasing flash prices have combined to drive capacity efficiencies.

2. Scale-Out – Utilizing a scale-out architectural design allows IT departments to deploy systems with a low-cost entry point, while providing a modular approach to scaling out the infrastructure as requirements grow. By designing systems to scale as a single-managed, scale-out system, federal IT departments can efficiently manage massive capacities with few resources. This is critical when dealing with ever-expanding workloads and the need to iterate and expand services in a rapid time frame. A scale-out architecture design facilitates rapid and modular expansion as needed, which enables federal IT organizations to address consolidation and closure of existing data centers.

3. Software-Defined – Using a software-defined model allows Federal IT organizations to automate configuration and deployment of IT services, deliver greater business agility and a more flexible, programmable approach to managing data services. The Automation of Infrastructure Management is another initiative of the FITARA. Leveraging a software-defined model will accelerate this process.

4. Cloud Enabled – Cloud-enabled infrastructures are fundamental to Modern Data Center design. Infrastructure services must be delivered via policy-driven methodologies. To achieve true agility, speed, and efficiency, these policies must extend beyond the data center. IT must have the ability to deploy and manage information and applications – both on- and off-premise – as well as the flexibility to move those workloads back and forth as a business requires. In Dell EMC’s hybrid cloud, workloads exist on-premise, which provides a path for organizations to move workloads into the cloud or create workloads in the cloud as needed. Being cloud enabled will allow federal IT agencies to address the Cloud Investment initiative.

For more information, contact the Dell team at Carahsoft at (866) 335-5246 or dellgroup@carahsoft.com.

As Agencies begin to implement their FITARA Roadmaps, Micro Focus can help reduce cost and significantly speed the time to value. The Micro Focus Category Management Offering helps GSA eliminate redundancies, increase efficiency, and deliver more value and savings from acquisition programs and contribute progress towards category management goals/objectives. The Micro Focus solutions provide the best-in-class technology to the federal government.

Carahsoft and Micro Focus are offering discounted packages for purchases made prior to the end of the government fiscal year.

Key business areas

• FITARA Software License Management Enablement: Pre-configured package to help agencies enable enterprise software license management required by OBM M-16-12. The bundles include Micro Focus’ Discovery and Universal Configuration Management Database, Hardware/Software Asset Management and our IT Business Analytics products coupled with initial services required to assist agencies in enabling software asset management.
• FITARA Incremental Development Enablement: Pre-configured packages to help agencies enable Agile best practices, reduce cost and improve the speed and quality of application releases. Choose from select groupings of Agile Manager, Quality Center/ALM, UFT, Performance Center, Network Virtualization and Mobility Center. All offerings includes our IT Business Analytics software to provide executive dashboards, metrics and progress reports towards Agency FITARA cost saving goals.
• FITARA IT Portfolio Savings Enablement: Pre-configured package to help agencies optimize, manage and reduce the cost of IT and meet established IT Portfolio Savings goals. The bundle includes enterprise architecture/mapping, application rationalization, portfolio and Program/Project management products integrated with our IT Business Analytics for financial tracking and reporting on IT cost savings.
• FITARA Data Center Automation: Pre-configured package of Micro Focus automation products required for automating common network, server and infrastructure tasks to reduce the cost of operations (Cloud, Network & Server Automation and Orchestration).
• Infrastructure Monitoring: NNMi, Operational Analytics, SiteScope, Storage Operations Management.

About FITARA

The Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) represents the first major overhaul of Federal information technology in over 20 years. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has been assisting agencies with this new reform to ensure that it is applied government-wide in a consistent and efficient manner.

To view the latest FITARA scorecard of government agencies, click here.

Click here to watch the archived recording of our FITARA webcast. Learn how Micro Focus solutions can help your agency comply with FITARA goals.

Nutanix makes infrastructure invisible, elevating IT to focus on the applications and services that power their business. The Nutanix Enterprise Cloud Platform blends web-scale engineering and consumer-grade design to natively converge server, storage, virtualization and networking into a resilient, software-defined solution with rich machine intelligence. This results in predictable performance, cloud consumption models, robust security, and seamless application mobility for all enterprise applications at any scale.

Nutanix helps government agencies meet and exceed the requirements of the Data Center Optimization Initiative (DCOI) as established in OMB Memorandum M-16-19, which supersedes the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative (FDCCI) and fulfills the data center requirements of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA). By moving to Nutanix, agencies can promote cloud (the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy “Cloud First” policy) and shared services, and transition their existing infrastructure to a more efficient platform that will leverage the technological advancements that optimize infrastructure. Nutanix’s unique innovative approach saves money and meets policies with a simple proven migration path off on-premise legacy outdated infrastructure.

Implementing the solutions within the Carahsoft Nutanix Category Management Offering will allow the Federal Government to achieve:

• Savings based on annual spend on Nutanix Solutions
• Optimization and consolidation of Hybrid Cloud Infrastructure
• Initiatives and objectives outlined in DCOI, FDCCI, FITARA, and the Cloud First Policy

Additional information can be found here:

• Carahsoft’s FITARA – Category Management Webpage
• Nutanix Overview
• Hyperconverged Cloud Infrastructure Solution Now Available on GSA’s IT Schedule 70

The Carahsoft ServiceNow Category Management Offering provides a streamlined avenue for agencies to acquire ServiceNow Software as a Service solutions. Each ServiceNow Category Management Offering is based on the ServiceNow Platform, a solution that enables agencies to deploy an enterprise-wide service model on a single platform with one user interface, one code base, and one data model. Such consolidation can make business and agency infrastructures more efficient, agile, responsive, reliable, and economical to operate. The ServiceNow Platform also provides over 30 base features to collaborate (e.g. knowledge, chat), manage resources (e.g. service catalog, configuration management database), design (e.g. forms designer, graphical workflows), and communicate and integrate (e.g. API, native mobile app). ServiceNow also provides experienced implementation leadership, expertise, services, training, and certification for ServiceNow customers.

The ServiceNow Category Management Offering supports a number of government initiatives and objectives, including:

• Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA),
• Making Electronic Government Accountable By Yielding Tangible Efficiencies Act (MEGABYTE Act of 2016)
• OMB M-16-12 requirements for Software Management (inventory, track and maintain, analyze usage)
• OMB M-15-14 PortfolioStat areas of driving value in Federal IT investments, delivering world-class digital services, and protecting Federal IT assets and information

The solutions and capabilities outlined within the Carahsoft ServiceNow Category Management Offering will allow the Federal Government to realize:

• Savings – Provide savings to federal departments and agencies.
• Security – Reduce the burden of security and IT compliance.
• Efficiency – Improve the efficiency of operations and service delivery.
• Transparency – Achieve unparalleled visibility into all projects, operations and services.
• Service – Deliver excellent customer service.

Additional information can be found here:

• Carahsoft’s FITARA – Category Management Webpage
  
• ServiceNow Overview
  
• GSA Negotiates New Enterprise License Agreement for Governmentwide Savings on Software

Federal agencies need to be able to protect their high value assets while focusing on cloud-smart adoption. Veritas Technologies provides Data Governance and Cloud Management solutions that help government agencies efficiently and securely transition to the cloud.

Carahsoft and Veritas’ Category Management Offerings Agreement provides:

• Data management solutions to enable IT modernization and cloud adoption.
• Hybrid purchasing and deployment models.
• Tiered discounts based on leveraging the buying power of the federal government.
• Reduced contract duplication and administrative costs with streamlined terms & conditions.
• This new software agreement is available to all federal, state, local, and tribal government agencies eligible to order from the GSA IT Schedule 70 program.

Additional information can be found here:

• Veritas Solutions Overview
• GSA Negotiates New Governmentwide Agreement for Veritas Technologies, LLC
• View the FITARA solution bundles and discounts available through Veritas Technologies and Carahsoft.

About the IT Schedule 70 FITARA Enhancement Program

In 2015, Congress passed the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA), which required GSA to put in place enterprise-wide agreements to support federal agencies in their acquisition of software. In 2016, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), further refined this requirement by mandating that GSA stand up at least two governmentwide software agreements annually, aimed at reducing costs and bringing innovative technology to the federal government through GSA’s IT Schedule 70.

For more information, please contact:

Bryan Jenkins
bryan.jenkins@carahsoft.com
703-871-8576