Navy command expands commercial IT acquisitions.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

* The Pentagon has set out to replace outdated military information systems with commercial products that offer far better performance at lower cost. Modernizing IT systems, however, can be problematic aboard Navy warships where the space is confined and computers run arcane pieces of software used to conduct a wide range of combat missions.

Despite the difficulties of updating computer systems aboard ships, the Navy has moved aggressively to insert commercial technology across the fleet, said Rear Adm. Christian "Boris" Becker, Navy program executive officer for C4I and space systems.

But Becker would like to see shorter turnaround times for these upgrades and is asking companies for ideas on how to do that.

"In the department, it is more advantageous for us to adapt to the commercial market to meet our needs. One of the challenges I've given out to industry is, 'How do we make this faster?'" Becker told National Defense in an interview from his office at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, in San Diego.

Becker oversees an information-technology portfolio that is worth about $2 billion a year, spread over 100 programs. One of the largest and most ambitious is CANES, short for consolidated afloat network enterprise services. "It's fundamental to the cyber security and capability of our ships at sea," he said. CANES will replace five legacy networks with a common computing environment infrastructure for command, control, communications, computers and intelligence, or C4I.

SPAWAR awarded contracts worth $2.5 billion in January to multiple vendors to equip up to 200 ships with CANES over eight years. So far, 25 vessels have deployed with the new system. The aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan was retrofitted with the CANES technology and recently left San Diego to replace the USS George Washington in Japan. "The installation was very challenging because of the time we had for availability," Becker said.

The program illustrates the Navy's push to adopt commercial technology and business models such as cloud computing, Becker said. In IT-speak, it's called providing infrastructure as a service, a form of cloud computing that offers virtualized computing resources over the Internet.

CANES will be the host platform for intelligence, logistics, command and control, and other applications.

"There is lot going on in information technology," said Becker. "CANES is delivering infrastructure as a service. We are implementing those tenets of...