U.S. Military Consolidates IT

Speaking at the DoD's Cyber Crime Conference in Palm Harbor, Fla., last month, Raduege said reliability, information speed and security for all branches will be enhanced by a central command. In conference presentations, officers and staff gave details on the cooperative processes that emerged from exercises in the late '90s and culminated in the new command structure.

There may be a lesson here for enterprises with multiple, autonomous branches: Divisional differences should end at the top, with someone who can order staff to play nice. Information sharing between organizational groups is good, but being able to make the organizations work as a whole will be even better.