Award(s)
Craig Abod, Carahsoft President, Wins 2021 Wash100 Award for Leading Company Growth, Driving Cloud, IT Capabilities Through Major Partnerships
Executive Mosaic is honored to introduce Craig Abod, president of Carahsoft Technology, as a recipient of the 2021 Wash100 Award, the most coveted and prestigious award in all of government contracting (GovCon).
This marks the seventh consecutive year that Abod has won the award and been recognized for his commitment and drive to the GovCon and federal sectors.
This year, Abod’s leadership has continued to drive growth for the company while developing partnerships in the federal sector, working to improve the capabilities of government information technology systems and advancing cloud capabilities to the public and government market.
“Craig has a formula that works and is a measurement fanatic. Abod follows the old saw, ‘what gets measured gets done,’ said Jim Garrettson, CEO of Executive Mosaic and founder of the Wash100 Award. “What gets done translates into perennial exponential success,” he continued.
Previously, Abod won his 2020 Wash100 Award last year for expanding Carahsoft’s portfolio and revenue through major contract award wins and developing close partnerships with the federal sector. In 2020, Abod continued his vision to push major IT modernization efforts, especially in cloud, hybrid cloud and other open software for the federal market.
In his opening remarks at the 2020 Adobe Digital Government Technology Conference, Abod said that the government is working to adapt to the changing needs of citizens during turbulent times. He specifically mentioned Carahsoft continuing its efforts to offer commercial hardware, software and support to key government clients.
“Our government customers are asking us for information on how they can get through this digital transformation especially in a time where their citizens are needing more human touch and they need to provide it using personal experiences in a digital format,” said Abod.
Carahsoft included seven more vendors in Feb. 2020, including Nutanix, Splunk and ServiceNow, to the company’s potential $820.4 million contract to provide asset management tools to the Department of Defense (DOD), U.S. Coast Guard and intelligence community.
“Carahsoft’s vendor and reseller partners are committed to ensuring that our government customers are able to maximize the value of their IT portfolios, keep pace with innovation, meet compliance requirements, and be assured that they’re getting the best prices possible,” Abod noted.
As a part of driving that mission, Carahsoft agreed to serve as the master government aggregator of GTY Technology Holdings in March 2020 in order to market the latter’s cloud-based products to the public sector through various contract vehicles.
Abod said the firm will market GTY’s products across all 50 U.S. states through the agreement as well as provide support services and marketing as a part of the partnership.
Following the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Carahsoft began working to connect government customers with key technologies that will continue to support organizational functions long after operations transition back to normal office settings.
Carahsoft’s progress in digital transformation initiatives serves as a “direct result of the government working with the commercial sector and government contract communities.”
A few months later, Carahsoft received authorization in Aug. 2020 from Microsoft to offer the latter’s Azure cloud tools and cloud computing platforms for government and commercial settings through the NASA Solutions for Enterprise-Wide Procurement V and Quilt national consortium contracts.
“We look forward to working with Carahsoft to expand the reach of Microsoft Azure and help accelerate government cloud adoption and migration initiatives,” said Rick Wagner, corporate vice president of Microsoft Federal and fellow 2021 Wash100 Award recipient.
In addition, Carahsoft agreed to offer Opus Interactive’s suite of hybrid and multicloud platforms and services to public sector customers through the former’s Cloud Purchasing Program in Dec. 2020. Opus Interactive’s hybrid and multicloud offerings are designed to help agencies store, transfer and process mission-critical workloads while ensuring interoperability and security.
“Craig Abod, the self-made man, has proven year after year after year that he can not only grow a business effectively but do it in one of the most competitive sectors of the marketplace,” said Jim Garrettson.
Executive Mosaic congratulates Craig Abod and the Carahsoft team on their 2021 Wash100 Award.
About Wash100
This year represents the eighth annual Wash100 award selection. The Wash100 is the premier group of private and public sector leaders selected by Executive Mosaic’s organizational and editorial leadership as the most influential leaders in the GovCon sector.
These leaders demonstrate skills in leadership, innovation, reliability, achievement, and vision. Visitors to wash100.com can sign in and vote for the executives they believe will have the greatest impact on government contracting in the coming year.
The media team at Executive Mosaic writes individualized articles for each recipient of the Wash100 award, providing a write up on the executive centered around their career history and highlights.