Are you a business leader? Are you finding the digital transformation a headache for you and your staff? Is it hard to compete with more flush companies for the best developers and data scientists? An organization that has to do those things, as well as fight wars on the side, might have some advice for you.

“Change in the DoD is like turning the enterprise into the wind with a canoe paddle,” said Kevin Garrison, principal director and director of Analytics, Dep CIO (Business Process and Systems Review) at the US Department of Defense (DoD). “It takes a long time,” he told Stu Miniman (@stu) and Paul Gillin (@pgillin),cohosts of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, during the MIT CDOIQ Symposium at the MIT Campus in Cambridge, MA.

Garrison said that the DoD has typically been slow to adopt shiny, new technology. “I don’t have wireless in the Pentagon where I work. I think next week we might, or some time real soon now,” he said.

Cost constraints

“My personal opinion is the only affordable solution for analytics going forward for any large-scale enterprise is you’ve really got to look hard at open-source,” Garrison said.

He stated that proprietary vendors for everything is not financially feasible for most. “The licensing costs kill you,” he said. As well, he added, “Switching platforms is like switching ERPs — not for the faint of heart and not cheap.”

Talent arms race

Garrison said the DoD’s comparatively modest budget forces it to find creative ways to pick up talent. One is “putting pressure on your large integration vendors through contract support to deliver people with the skill sets.”

This way, the DoD has been able acquired highly trained people who are willing to work with the tools it provides. “Windows 10 and a five-year-old laptop is not really exciting for someone who just graduated from MIT,” he quipped.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of the MIT CDOIQ Symposium.

Photo by SiliconANGLE