I visited Garth Spencer from Senator Carper’s
staff Monday in the Hart Senate Building, and while there had the
opportunity to photograph this very small “Senate Waste Receptacle”. I found it
rather ironic that I was there to speak about the huge amount of waste the
government incurs each year by allowing government IT groups to specify “OEM
only” or “New only” for IT purchase and support contracts. Over the last 10 years Zerowait has built an international business by offering exceptional deals on off-lease NetApp
systems with transferable software licenses and top notch NetApp support. Along
the way we’ve sold and maintained systems for various government and military
agencies, saving them hundreds of thousands of dollars, which is a very small
percentage of the Federal Government’s IT support expenditures. For the last
decade the majority of our hardware, service, and support business has been with
commercial customers, but perhaps the time has come for Federal Government departments to tighten their belt also?
During our discussion we discussed the multiple
ways that Delaware’s Senator Carper and the Senate IT Committee could easily reduce Federal IT
costs, without effecting reliability. Sequestration offers the
government the chance to reset many of the wasteful spending habits it has
fallen into. By taking full advantage of the commercial IT marketplace for service and support alternatives the Department of Defense and other Federal departments could affordably maintain and grow their IT assets even as
spending was reduced.
Allowing competition for hardware support for all Federal IT equipment is an easy place to start saving money. The Federal Government could easily stretch their IT budget if it would follow the lead of our Gobal commercial customers.