A new breed of contractors emerge in a tougher market

When executives from a large systems integrator met recently with a federal customer seeking to solve an IT problem, the customer wasn't interested in talking about research. The government official wanted to know how the company's commercial customers were dealing with a similar problem. "It wasn't about some in a class by itself technology out there hereafter," one of the company executives said. "The client was interested in what our commercial customers are buying."

"I think your average federal chief information officer, chief innovation officer and procurement official but recognizes that the kind of Soviet-style, five-year-plan megaprogram for their agency doesn't deliver the goods," said John Hillen, president and CEO of Global Defense and Research Systems. "Mostly, agencies are going to move away from the super program that solves every problem and instead say, 'Let's move the ball down the field and put points on the board where we can.' "