Military services see innovation as a way to cope with IT budget cuts

Senior military research leaders said they expect advances in thin-client computing, tiered data storage and other innovations in information management will help them achieve substantial savings to cope with inevitable budget cuts on the horizon.

Army Deputy CIO Maj. Gen. Mark Bowman said his service sees enormous promise in thin client research, where data-intensive computing processes are handled by a server supporting multiple "dumb" terminals.

"At first there was big push back," Bowman said, when the innovation was implemented at U.S. Central Command. Countering the "box huggers" in an organizational culture that valued putting a processor in accordance with every desk was difficult, however the research, which has grown more sophisticated in recent years, allowed the command to cut costs and improve security, he said.