Despite gloomy budget outlook, IT industry seeing green.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.
• Position: Defense Insider

* The industry that provides software and computer networks to the Defense Department unlike the weapons manufacturing sector, does not see gloom and doom on the horizon.

The IT sector, in fact, expects to thrive in the near term, as the military services continue to modernize their information systems, analysts said.

The Pentagon's budget request for fiscal year 2012 includes $38.4 billion for information technology. That is nearly half of the entire federal government's $80.9 billion IT business.

"We think agency IT budgets will be impacted less than overall budgets," said Doug Gaines, director of market intelligence for immixGroup, a government contracting consulting firm in McLean, Va. Information-technology products are safer from budget cuts, he said, as they are regarded as "critical to achieving efficiencies and cost savings."

Another trend that is working in favor of the IT sector are the Defense Department's soaring needs for mobile communications. "Access [to information] from any device, anywhere, anytime" is an area of growing emphasis for the Defense Department, said Cory Millard, immixGroup...