Beyond reseller pacts: How government contractors are building strategic tech partnerships

Accenture's U.S. federal subsidiary and Science Applications International Corp. have joined a growing number of systems integrators working to build deeper relationships with commercial technology companies.

The trend is especially hot with software makers, but these relationships go well beyond reseller agreements and pledges to use the commercial products on future projects.

Accenture Federal Services' new partnership with Palantir focuses on using the latter's artificial intelligence tech in three core areas:

• Enterprise-to-edge data fusion
• Predictive supply chain orchestration
• Operational financial intelligence

For SAIC and ServiceNow, their collaboration will focus on integrating ServiceNow’s artificial intelligence offerings into SAIC’s mission labs. Customers will be able to collaborate directly with both companies to develop, test and deploy outcome-based IT services.

The partnership builds on the work the two companies have done together on the Army Enterprise Service Management Platform, a unified setup for managing enterprise IT services.

We’ve also seen these kinds of partnerships at contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton, CACI International, Leidos and General Dynamics IT. This also shows the shift in how government contractors approach technology delivery.

Companies seem to be opting for fewer, but deeper relationships. Instead of bringing a catalog of tech offerings to the customers, these new partnerships bring a more specific level of expertise to the customer.

The relationships also are a conduit for feedback and investment between the integrator and the technology company. In essence, the partners invest in each other.

The integrator brings direct customer feedback and needs, while the technology partner often brings a first look at new product development to the integrator.

Some of the touted benefits include accelerated innovation cycles because the government contractor is part of the commercial research-and-development process.

The integrator also brings a proven commercial platform to the customer, reducing risk.

For both Accenture and SAIC, they see the partnerships as having benefits across multiple customers like a coveted scalable delivery model.

These partnerships also represent significant capital commitments. For example, Accenture Federal is training and certifying 1,000 professionals on Palantir platforms and that shows confidence in long-term market demand rather than opportunistic alliances.

Given the Trump administration’s emphasis on commercial solutions and performance-based contracts, these kinds of partnership will increase.

But the success of these kinds of partnerships may depend on the willingness of government buyers to adopt new models. We will have to track any wins that come from these partnerships to get some answers to that question.