This article draws from our recent Dawn of Autonomy Podcast featuring Lauren Regiec, the Team Lead for Carahsoft's Geospatial, UAS, and Space Tech business units to provide insights into the data requirements of Federal, State, and Local Government agencies government, educational, healthcare and public safety customers and how Carahsoft supports them with a diverse range of data collection and protection solutions. Regardless of which of these sectors you support, cyber security, multi-cloud, DevSecOps, artificial intelligence, ZeroTrust all collide with the autonomy and robotics ecosystem because, in the end, these systems are “All About Data.” 

Dawn Zoldi: Lauren, what do you do at Carahsoft? 

Lauren Regiec: I have been with Carahsoft for five years now and am currently the Team Lead for several of its different business units, including geospatial, autonomy and robotics and space tech. I focus on sales for the public sector including the Department of Defense (DoD), the Intelligence Community (IC), Federal Civilian, state and local governments as well as educational institutions. Specifically, I help to grow the public sector business for over 80 vendors. I do this by assisting in the development of their channel programs and go-to-market strategies. 

Dawn Zoldi: Lauren, tell us about Carahsoft. 
Lauren Regiec: Carahsoft is a distribution partner that focuses on proactively selling and marketing information technology (IT) solutions to the government. We support three main customers: technology manufacturers, end users in the public sector and reseller and system partners in any particular channel. Over the past 20 years, we’ve grown to over 3,000 employees. We're headquartered right outside of Washington DC, in Reston, Virginia. Last year we ended at 16 billion in revenue, which was a significant growth year for us. We've continued to experience over 1 billion dollars in growth annually.  

Dawn Zoldi: What do you attribute Carahsoft’s success to? 

Lauren Regiec: We attribute our consistent growth over the last few years to our significant focus on working with our existing vendors, continual expansion to new markets, aligning with new vendors that want to work with us and our uniquely proactive distribution model. What sets us apart from a typical distributor is that at its core, Carahsoft is a sales and marketing company with a laser focus on all of our customers' needs. All of our sales teams are highly trained on each vendor, its technology solution or the specific vertical that they support. 

Dawn Zoldi: You mentioned the term “verticals.” What does that mean? 

Lauren Regiec: We bucket our partners’ technologies into specific verticals, such as cyber security, AI and machine learning, geospatial, multi-cloud, open source, law enforcement, autonomy and robotics, etc. All of these align with trending solutions and government initiatives. Organizing in this way also allows us to offer a one-stop shop and end-to-end solution. 

Dawn Zoldi: Can you give us some insight into Carahsoft’s process for market research to determine which verticals to pursue? 

Lauren Regiec: Carahsoft has an entire market research department. We subscribe to a number of various bid boards. Every day our team scours them for keywords as well as industry trends and industry initiatives. We use this actionable account intelligence for our own strategic planning and to support our partners in finding and responding to emerging market opportunities. 

Dawn Zoldi: Let’s talk about some of your data-related verticals. AI is everywhere, especially in autonomy and robotics. Tell us more about your AI vertical. 

Lauren Regiec: There's a lot of data that supports both government customers and our vendors when it comes to critical decision making. We partner with AI vendors that offer a variety of solutions, from automation to identify trends, computer vision infrastructure, machine learning to help cyber security identify threats or to efficiently and securely manage data and more. 

Dawn Zoldi: So much data seems to go “in the cloud.” How significant is the customer demand for cloud-based service offerings (CSOs) right now? 

Lauren Regiec: Cloud-based Investments are increasing. Government agencies 

need to save money while building faster capabilities to safely collect and store data. Carahsoft works with all of the major cloud service providers (CSPs), managed service providers (MSPs) and internet service providers (ISPs). 

Dawn Zoldi: Are there other verticals you want to highlight that might be relevant to the autonomy and robotics crowd? 

Lauren Regiec: I already touched on our multi-cloud portfolio which features a network of cloud solutions that we help make available to government agencies through various contracts to enhance the infrastructure and support mission success. Because we are talking “all about data,” I should also highlight our IoT (Internet of Things) and smart city verticals. These help safeguard agency information through secure communications, monitoring and analysis of critical data, along with our Development, Security, and Operations (DevSecOps) Solutions, we can integrate security into every single phase of the DevSecOps lifecycle to ensure faster and more secure software. In addition to this, we also have 5G service providers that help to accelerate real-time information delivery. These are just a few more examples that connect to autonomy and robotics. 

Dawn Zoldi: Does Carahsoft link up these disparate verticals companies with each other to provide governments with holistic solutions? 

Lauren Regiec: Absolutely. We work with various resellers, system integrators and 

consultants to collaborate with our technology partners and empower them to overcome challenges with the public sector. For example, we have channel teams and reseller implementation partners that help to manage distribution programs for manufacturers. On the reseller side alone, we have over 10,000 trusted government contractors in our system. We create entire reseller ecosystems to which our vendor and manufacturer partners have access. We can also bring in new reseller partners that a business may already be working with. This is a win-win because it helps us to expand our reseller partners group. We also provide significant marketing activities, lead generation campaigns, teaming agreements on our GSA accounts and other contracts. We have dedicated program managers for all of our system integrators, who have training on our partners’ products and proactively tell those integrations about the technologies that we sell. Given the scope of our partners, we can often act as a one-stop shop for system integrators for any of the technology that they might need to 

acquire. 

Dawn Zoldi: Can you give us an example of a cross-cutting autonomy and data-related offering? 

Lauren: Sure. Let’s connect data, autonomy and robotics and healthcare. Semi-autonomous drones are being used to carry life-saving medical supplies and equipment, such as defibrators. It is just absolutely amazing. In the healthcare technology solution space, Carahsoft helps healthcare organizations combat a wide range of their daily challenges. In the beginning of COVID-19, we started providing numerous Better Together solutions that increase equal-access to care, increase productivity, enhance communications and improve the overall quality, safety and effectiveness of health delivery systems.  

Dawn Zoldi: I want to pivot a bit and talk about data requirements in the government space. We’ve all heard of “FedRAMP.” For companies trying to navigate working with the federal government, what is FedRAMP and why is it important? 

Lauren Regiec: Besides our different technology verticals, Carahsoft also has a specific FedRAMP,  Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program, portfolio. FedRAMP is a government-wide program to help standardize the federal approach to security assessments for CSOs. Carahsoft provides access to the FedRAMP marketplace and we help enable these agencies to explore CSOs that have achieved FedRAMP authorization.  

Dawn Zoldi: Is there a similar state-level requirement like FedRAMP? 

Lauren Regiec: Yes and Carahsoft also has a StateRAMP marketplace that caters to state and local governments. 

Dawn Zoldi: In the autonomy space, these vehicles essentially are flying, driving or swimming computers. Is there usually a FedRAMP requirement for them to work with 

the federal government? 

Lauren Regiec: The FedRAMP requirement applies to software. It’s helpful for software as a service (SaaS) solutions that involve the cloud to get FedRAMP certified. These companies can partner with Carahsoft to help get approvals for their solutions. We host events every year, open and complimentary to industry and government attendees, at our Reston headquarters and online, to share information about the importance of being FedRAMP certified. 

Dawn Zoldi: We’ve all heard of Zero Trust, when it comes to protecting data. What is it and how does Carahsoft facilitate it? 

Lauren Regiec: Zero Trust is an IT security model that requires strict identity verification for every person and device trying to access resources on a private network. We can support government agencies and government agencies in adapting Zero Trust, especially when it comes to architectures. We have 800 people in our company out of 3,000 that are focused just on cyber security. We partner with over 150 cyber security vendors, so we can offer every single Zero Trust capability. We also focus on delivering Better Together Solutions so our customers can get more value out of the investments they have made in these technologies. We do that by integrating two or more silo technologies to automate these actions. We understand that it can be difficult, costly and time consuming to implement new technologies. We are here to help organizations evaluate the available options to make good decisions from the start and maintain their tech in compliance with standards. 

Dawn Zoldi: The Department of Defense (DoD) has additional data requirements, beyond the average federal agency. Can you talk a little about the DoD’s Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification 2.0? 

Lauren Regiec: The DoD developed CMMC to enhance data security within the Defense Industrial Base (DIB) by addressing emerging threats. Carahsoft collaborates with various technology partners to provide these defense agencies with the necessary tools for the CMMC compliance. Similar to FedRAMP, Carahsoft has a CMMC Marketplace that allows defense agencies to explore technology solutions that align with these cyber security requirements. In these marketplaces, we offer comprehensive security services all tailored to the CMMC framework. We also feature platforms that assist agencies to 

closely align with that framework. 

Dawn Zoldi: There seems to be a labyrinth of requirements, which can be confusing to businesses trying to do work with the government. Does Carahsoft offer training? 

Lauren Regiec: We offer a ton of education and training on our website, not just to our partners but to the general public. In fact, several of the vendors that we work with include training materials on their microsites. Anyone can access a wide range of information, ranging from product overviews from government customers who discuss how they're using particular products, various white papers, data sets on customer needs and blogs, to name a few. 

Dawn Zoldi: Speaking of education, besides working with governmental and healthcare agencies, Carahsoft also works in the “.edu” space. Talk to us about that. 

Lauren Regiec: Sure. Carahsoft is also in the education space at all levels, from K through 12 through higher education. We have a multitude of specialized contracts. On the data side of things, besides delivering cyber security and cloud solutions, we also offer Learning Management Systems (LMS), educational device applications and 

Software. These enable secure, intuitive and reliable learning environments while enhancing student privacy and resource optimization. We also offer other cutting edge technologies, such as autonomy and robotics, for STEM educators. 

Dawn Zoldi: We discussed Carahsoft’s government, healthcare and educational customers. Let’s focus now on what Carahsoft specifically does for public safety clients. 

Lauren Regiec: Carahsoft has a lot going on in the public safety space. We have an entire law enforcement vertical that works to connect all of the different technologies relevant to public safety. We offer solutions ranging from drones that can be used as Drone as First Responders (DFR) capabilities to digital twins and 3D modeling of crime and accident scenes. We have a presence annually at the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP). We recently hosted our first Law Enforcement Innovation Summit where guest speakers from government, industry, consultants, vendor partners discussed a variety of topics relating to maximizing technology such as privacy, policing around Zero Trust and how to leverage AI for digital evidence. 

Dawn Zoldi: What future markets is Carahsoft looking to explore? 

Lauren: We have interest in the advanced air mobility (AAM) ecosystem, from electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft to UAS traffic management systems (UTM).  The reason why we rebranded our UAS solution vertical to autonomy and robotics was to widen that umbrella to include more manufacturers that want to work with us to grow their public sector business. We also just launched a space vertical. 

Dawn Zoldi: What is Carahsoft doing to explore these new areas of interest? 

Lauren Regiec: For one, we’ll be attending some upcoming events to meet face to face with some of these manufacturers, such as AUVSI XPONENTIAL and the Space Symposium. We would love to see anyone who wants to discuss how we can partner together. 

Dawn Zoldi: Aside from finding you at some of these events, how can people learn more about Carahsoft or get in touch with you? 

Lauren Regiec: Anyone looking to partner with us can find us online on our website (www.carahsoft.com). We have a live chat on there if you're an end user and want 

get some of your questions quickly answered. Folks can also follow us on social media. You can also reach out to me directly at lauren.regiec@carahsoft.com. You can reach out to my team as well at geospatial@carashoft.com. 

Watch Lauren Regiec, Team Lead at Carahsoft | Dawn of Autonomy | Episode 6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV3B8Vdxu2k 

Watch Lacey Wean, Director at Carahsoft | Dawn of Drones | Episode 101: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBc1P77ZAw0 

Read AUVSI’s eBrief article about Carahsoft here: https://www.auvsi.org/calling-robotics-and-autonomy-companies-join-carah...