In the 2008-2015 Campaign Plan the Army CIO/G-6 states:  “Our Army faces an ever-changing and evolving enemy and must be able to respond rapidly to defeat emerging threats.  The current operating environment and projections of persistent conflict dictate the need to rapidly develop capabilities for both the current and future forces.  Further, the rapid pace of information technology change will create opportunities necessitating transformation of our development and procurement process to exploit these opportunities and effectively integrate them into the force.  This transformation must include ways and means to identify and mitigate risks associated with procurement and acquisition in the global IT market space. “ Though stated by the Army's CIO/G6, this observation is true for all of DoD's military services.

The rapid pace of technology development is fueled by the demands in the commercial market for increased functionality at a lower cost. There will always be military unique requirements however this does not preclude the Army from gaining substantial benefit from commercial industry’s R&D spending; technological advances; price/performance; short development to market time frames and the gap closure that can be achieved between military unique requirements and commercial industry’s technology trends.

To recognize and apply these benefits, it takes more than current and complete knowledge of the technology, but also knowledge of the commercial market for and in which these technologies compete; its vendors; locus of innovation, core competencies and the impact of the financial markets on these suppliers.

In addition to its ability to use both manual and automated tools and systems to identify potential suppliers, CommerceBasix has established working relationships with many of the senior executives at leading commercial technology vendors who can bring to bear their core competencies and expertise to address the Army’s capability needs.  In addition, CommerceBasix has established working relationships with defense suppliers.  The combination of these two markets provides the Army the ability to accelerate development and deployment of capabilities for the current and future force, keep cost as a key parameter, mitigate risk and address the life cycle issues of obsolescence.