Military looks to reuse IT equipment

The Defense Department is achieving substantial savings by reusing old hardware, particularly IT equipment, Amber Corrin of sister publication FCW reports.

The Army’s Brigade Modernization Command, for example, estimates it is saving about $7 million annually by repurposing automation equipment, FCW found. The command said high-end hardware used for computing-intensive simulation applications can be reused at the end of its life cycle as desktop computers.

In this scenario, Army officials said, hard drives are swapped out of machines that can no longer handle required number-crunching and replaced with standard drives.

Licensing agreements with vendors make it difficult to repurpose software since it is generally licensed for use in specific applications, FCW reported. Still, senior DOD officials have recently stressed that the shift to commercial IT products could help reduce IT infrastructure costs. “Let’s use our buying power,” to drive down IT costs, said deputy CIO Robert Carey. “We haven’t done that yet.”