As a Brigadier in charge of 4,500 people Michael Lithgow had many objectives in his MoD career -- with none more important than protecting lives.

But ultimately Lithgow wanted a different, more intellectual challenge -- which led him to analysts Gartner.

"The commercial world offered an opportunity where I could continue to go on working in the defense community and add my experience and knowledge," says Lithgow.

"I had a lot to offer the defense services as they go through such a challenging period, as I have been part of that operational community and know it very well," he says.

These challenges have arisen because of the fundamental changes to defense. "It had used a stove-pipe approach, but as defense has more network enabling capability it has evolved a centralized need to know and need to share. The business and the battle are more connected, and there are now more tours," he adds.

Lithgow has considerable experience of critical program management, information management, IT/IS policy and governance. He has worked in fielding communications and IT networks in hostile environments to support combat, intelligence, logistics and multi-national operations. He has also worked with various government departments on classified tasks, which have included 'homeland security' and counter-terrorism."

He and his team at Gartner will be offering the MoD assistance in understanding business issues. "This will include areas like how business is structured and how to transition, if they so wish."

He will also be handling industry suppliers, and matrix organizations like airlines, telecommunications and offering help and advice to develop relationships between the different sections.

The MoD is a massive consumer of IT. In the annual CIO survey of the largest users of IT in the U.K. it is consistently in the top three, and has a projected budget of £33.4 billion for the 2007/08 year. It has been in the midst of major restructuring since 2000, when it tried to build a single asset management system. The scope of this project was so vast, and the governance at the time so poor, that the project was suspended. The positives to emerge were that very robust change management and governance procedures were put into place before embarking on another even larger project, the Defence Information Infrastructure. The 10-year DII project is designed to support MoD operations with a common secure network, and will eventually support 2,000 MoD sites with 150,000 fixed or mobile terminals and 300,000 user accounts. At the crux of the IT project, however, is a fundamental shift in the way the MoD operates, from a three-service IT provision to a single shared environment.