The U.S. Navy's recent directive that bars procurement officers from purchasing computer servers and opening new data centers may suggest the military force is ready to migrate to a service-oriented architecture.

By stopping the trend of building systems on top of existing systems, the Navy could cut costs and increase IT efficiency with SOA, which takes advantage of networks, systems and applications already in place.

Along with the directive, the Navy also ordered commanders to draft plans to reduce their data centers by 25 percent and increase the utilization of existing servers by 40 percent.

"It's time to make hard decisions," Janice Haith, director of the assessment and compliance division in the Navy's information dominance office, told United Press International. "The Navy leadership embraced this back in November and now we're reinforcing it."

Other government agencies, such as the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, have already embraced service-oriented architecture. The CBP recently announced it has plans to hire 1,000 IT professionals, bringing its total to 2,500, as it tries to get more efficient with SOA. The agency's budget has been cut $306 million in the past two years.