Bill Rowan, VMWare’s VP of Federal Sales, Inducted into 2018 Wash100 for his Leadership in Security Innovation in Cloud Migration
Executive Mosaic is pleased to announce Bill Rowan, Vice President of VMware’s Federal Sales department, has been added into the 2018 edition of the Wash100 — Executive Mosaic’s annual selection of the most influential voices in the government contracting arena — for raising the bar in how industry providers are using innovative security solutions in hybrid cloud infrastructure.
In the shift to mobile technology, companies and agencies across the board have been working to fully-accommodate and secure IoT devices against cyber attacks on and off the electronic battlefield. Leaders in the industry, like Bill Rowan, are knowledgeable enough to know that decisions made on the applications a user has access to is based on the platform they use, and not simply the technology available in the given environment.
In early 2016 he published an op-ed in FCW on “The Monumental IT opportunity of the 2020 census,” expressing erudite distaste for the fast-approaching decennial appropriation of where federal tax money will be allocated for schools, roads and other facets of public infrastructure.
“Clearly, the stakes couldn’t be higher, especially because so much about our country has changed since 2010. For many reasons, the 2020 census IT challenge is exponentially larger than ever,” he writes. “Think about it this way: No company using off-the-shelf software has ever had to survey 300 million people. The 2020 census requires a bold new IT strategy, beginning with an on-premises cloud and tapping hybrid cloud technology so computing power can surge as needed to support an agile development environment.”
With all the discussions on cloud migration in the federal IT space, many have recognized that there is room for improvement, as Rowan suggests in an article he published a year prior in GCN.
“Agencies should look for a hybrid cloud solution that acts like an extension of their existing infrastructure, not a separate stovepipe,” Rowan expressed. “This provides real choice and flexibility for data and applications. It will truly jump-start the migration workloads to the cloud and–just as importantly–back again as needed. Transitioning to a hybrid cloud with proven technologies removes or reduces much of the risk involved in adopting cloud, while also offering better cost savings and leveraging existing technical and personnel resources.”
Rowan leads a team of more than 175 sales, engineering, advisory and implementation services professionals who aid federal organizations in meeting the requirements for cloud technology and virtualization. With over three decades of experience serving as an advisor to the Department of Defense, Federal Valued Added Resellers and other Systems Integrator organizations, Rowan has the experience to critically evaluate IT strategies, exploring their success as network technologies change and the future of mobility shifts moving forward.
“Freed from the constant grind of just ‘keeping the network up,’ IT staff can deliver capabilities to their internal department clients and have more time to present their compute and storage requirements to contractors, furthering the transition to a software-defined enterprise supported by clear, tight service-level agreements developed in a collaborative manner,” he said. “Moving to the hybrid cloud will the benefits of [virtualization] to an entirely new level. The next few years will bring amazing advancements to government IT, and I’m excited to be part of that transformation.”
Prior to his current role at VMware, Rowan was the Federal DoD Operations Director at EMC, holding senior management positions at Storage Technology Corporation, MicroStrategy and IBM.
Executive Mosaic congratulates Bill Rowan and the VMware team for receiving this award.