FROM THE DEPUTY ASSISTANT
SECRETARY OF THE ARMY FOR PLANS AND RESOURCES
MR. DALE A . ORMOND
PULLING TOGETHER
Collaboration drives integration, which in turn drives the future force
A
chieving the Army chief of staff’s vision for Force 2025 and Beyond has clear implications for Army acquisition. Some aspects are obvious, such as the need for greater lethality and reduced procurements.
However, there is one important aspect that might not leap immediately to mind, but that drives the consumer technology industry: eliminating the friction and loss that come from tech- nology that is not well-integrated.
Te corporations that created the defining consumer technolo- gies of the past few decades have turned their attention over the past several years to building ecosystems. Tese are collec- tions of software, hardware and services that allow us to move from computer to tablet to phone without losing access to our important information or capabilities. Tese companies are now extending the ecosystems to the Internet of things—thermo- stats, refrigerators, home security systems and more.
Apple, Google, Amazon and others have not turned away from their core products or services, as they know they can’t stitch together second-rate products to create an attractive ecosystem.
But they have looked strategically at their markets, their cus- tomers and their emerging technologies and determined that consumers want to remove the friction and loss caused by not having the information they need or the capability to effectively use the information they have. In other words, consumers don’t want to stop and think about syncing devices, puzzle over inter- faces, or wait until they can physically relocate themselves or one of their devices.
What these companies are doing illustrates exactly the goals we have for Soldiers and their commanders, and we must deliver on our goals if we are to have a smaller force with equal or greater combat power than today’s Army. Systems complexity costs Soldiers time, energy and attention on the battlefield. Poorly integrated systems delay the ability of decision-makers to act when it will do the most good, and may deny them the ability to act at all.
A COMMERCIAL MODEL Just as technology companies look to deliver an ecosystem that maximizes consumers’ time and minimizes their loss, we must
ASC.ARMY.MIL 117
COMMENTARY
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