A new analysis from Frost & Sullivan says the Defense Department‘s reduced budget is pushing technology providers to come up with consolidated offerings, modification proposals and product improvements.

Frost & Sullivan expects the DoD C4ISR market to be worth $41.42 billion in 2014 and $35.20 billion in 2018, the firm said Thursday.

The downturn is creating demand for commercial off-the-shelf tools that are designed to encourage collaboration and enterprise networking between users, according to the findings.

“In future, the focus will be on mature, proven and common C4ISR systems,” noted Brad Curran, senior industry analyst for the aerospace and defense division at Frost & Sullivan.

Sequestration, reprogramming and spending caps on overseas contingency operations are among the factors identified by Frost & Sullivan as driving up the cost of C4ISR contracts.