Following the recent news that Brandon Utt had joined Aquia as Vice President of Business Development, OS AI caught up with Brandon to find out why this experienced industry veteran and former VA and DOD contracting lead selected Aquia and what it means for this company steeped in purpose, its client base and current and potential partners.
Energy and Sense of Purpose
Aquia’s culture was evident immediately, whether talking with leadership or throughout the company — there is a consistent energy and sense of purpose. In addition to having a great technical foundation across cyber, cloud, and digital transformation capabilities, I’m excited to be part of an SDVOSB, especially one whose primary focus includes VA and its mission. Aquia has great potential for growth and they believe in conducting business collaboratively and with a team-first approach. I’m looking forward to being part of that.
As far as supporting Aquia and their clients, I definitely feel fortunate to have the combination of experiences as both a VA employee and through different roles in industry. I think that perspective has provided a fairly unique view for the ebbs and flows of pursuing government contracts and ultimately supporting government customers, especially as a growing business. Aquia already has plenty of talented and experienced people, so I’m hopeful that my background will just be another layer to complement and inform how we look at our strategies and approaches moving forward.
Added Depth and Domain Knowledge – Starting with SPRUCE
The Aquia team has done a great job in building relationships and creating opportunities for growth in a short period of time. I hope to be another set of hands as we continue to add depth and increase our domain knowledge within each of our customer bases. My initial emphasis will largely be VA with the SPRUCE vehicle, in coordination with our JV partner Nava. This provides a great avenue for expansion and also an opportunity to continue building meaningful partnerships across industry. Into the future, we’ll look to continuously adapt that model into other new or existing target agencies to maximize the great work that our folks continue to provide on a daily basis in direct support of our customers.
Modernization at the Appropriate Scale and Pace
There seems to be a steady desire among government requirement owners for continuously modern technology and solution offerings, focus on end-user and customer experience, and tangible thought leadership/partnership as they execute the vision for their business lines. Not that all contracts are equally technology-forward, but I think there remains a consistent trend where the government is looking to industry to provide solutions and modernization at the appropriate scale and pace, in a way that is also predictable and transparent.
A primary challenge for industry continues to be how to balance the types of offerings mentioned above at a price that works for the government and is still competitive from a proposal perspective. Along those same lines, the ability of industry to meaningfully assist in the government’s market research efforts is still a work in progress.
Complementary Cyber, Cloud and Transformation Pursuits
I definitely agree with that. There is a lot of work out there, and there are many successful and aspiring companies in our space. It goes without saying that we need to have the right combination of technical expertise and customer familiarity to provide meaningful value to the missions we support, but just as importantly, we need to have partners that we can trust to be flexible and transparent as we work toward our common goals and delivering the things that we say we will. I welcome conversations with partners of all sizes and statuses that both multiply and complement Aquia’s cybersecurity, cloud, and digital transformation pursuits.
I’m excited for this next opportunity and look forward to reconnecting with partners old and new to support the missions that are important to us and the government people responsible for them on the other side.
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