Blog originally posted by Federal News Network here.

2019 has ended with more uncertainty than normal—even than the federal government is used to. Last year at this time, of course, Christmas brought the advent of a record-long lapse in appropriations for about half the departments and agencies. The exceptions of Homeland Security, Defense and Veterans Affairs kept IT dollars flowing, but the partial shutdown left its mark nonetheless.

The ugly impeachment process working its way down the hall from the house to the Senate might be a psychic distraction but will have no effect on IT procurement.

SolarWinds (NYSE:SWI), a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT management software, today announced that the SolarWinds^® Orion^® Suite for Federal Government v4.0 is undergoing evaluation for Common Criteria to Evaluation Assurance Level (EAL) 2+ under the Netherlands Scheme for Certification in the Area of IT Security (NSCIB).

​The SolarWinds Team at DLT is excited to announce after rigorous testing, the ​SolarWinds Orion^® Suite for Federal Government v3.0 has been placed on the Department of Defense Information Network (DoDIN) Approved Products List (APL). The Orion Suite also has Common Criteria certification.

The Orion Suite for Federal Government v3.0 includes:

The month of September marks the busiest buying season for the federal government. In the final month of fiscal year 2018, an astonishing $97 billion was spent on 509, 828 contracts. On average, this equates to $3.2 billion per day.

September is also getting busier and busier. Between 2015 and 2018 spending increased by 39%.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year…as the song goes and that is also true of the U.S. Federal IT market right now. The month of September marks the end of the fiscal year and the beginning of the federal government’s annual spending frenzy. Federal agencies scramble to spend what’s left in their budgets, in fear that leaving excess funds will prompt Congress to send less in the following year. We call it “use it or lose it” spending, and it happens every year.

The days are getting shorter, and, as the end of September approaches, the window of opportunity for technology providers to capitalize on federal fiscal year-end sales opportunities is shrinking. September 30^th marks the end of the federal government’s fiscal year which means the run-up to month-end is a busy one as contractors vie for federal “use it or lose it” dollars.

Every Federal IT pro knows that security threats are a top agency priority. Yet, according to the SolarWinds 2019 Cybersecurity Survey, those threats are increasing—particularly the threat of accidental data exposure from people inside the agency.

The latest data on the progress of federal government agencies’ implementation of the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act (FITARA) was released on June 26 by the House Oversight and Reform Committee as Scorecard 8.0.

DLT Solutions recently sat down with Red Hat Chief Technologist, North America Public Sector, David Egts, to discuss the recent release of Red Hat OpenShift.

DLT: So David, tell us a little about what you do at Red Hat.