Nov 26 2008   12:44PM GMT

CDW sees growth in government market

Posted by: Bcournoyer
Colin Steele, Hewlett-Packard, Servers and desktop hardware

Earlier this week I got to talk with Casey Jones, a field sales executive for CDW Government, about the channel opportunities in the government market — expected to be one of the hottest verticals in 2009.In a straw poll taken at the CDW Partner Summit last week, partners said the government vertical will spend more than most others on IT next year.

“We expect this to be a growth market for ’09, after healthcare and energy,” Jones said.

The opportunities in government aren’t necessarily because a new, tech-savvy administration is taking over, or even because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Jones said. Instead, it’s the simple fact that the government plans its spending further in advance, while many private sector businesses are freezing or cutting budgets on the fly because of the bad economy.

CDW-G and Autodesk recently partnered with the U.S. Department of Defense on a hardware and software deal with the Heavy Engineering Equipment State Company, an Iraq-based manufacturing firm. Autodesk provided its AutoCAD design software, and CDW-G sold the hardware, which included Hewlett-Packard desktops and servers and APC server racks and power supplies.

Interestingly — but not surprisingly — CDW-G configured the desktops with Windows XP, not Vista.