Consortium Offers Guidelines for Network Interoperability
By ANTONIE BOESSENKOOL
Published: 16 Oct 2009 16:57
An industry group is publicly releasing its first set of guidelines for network interoperability in an effort to get contractors on the same page when it comes to making information networks that can operate with each other.
The Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium is a group of 80 organizations and companies, including the biggest defense companies in the United States and Europe, large information technology companies such as Cisco and IBM and government groups like the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and the Australian Government Department of Defence. The group formed in 2004 to promote common standards and a common approach to information systems with the goal of achieving more interoperability across systems and a common "global framework." It also works with NATO and the European Union on network interoperability issues.
NCOIC also recently named a new chairman: Dan Starcevich, director of engineering at Raytheon's Network Centric Systems business, who has taken over from Terry Morgan, director of network-centric strategy for Cisco Systems' Global Government Solutions group. NCOIC names a new chair every year.
NCOIC calls the standards it's releasing "patterns" for developing information networks that are interoperable. Morgan likened the patterns to clothing patterns - they can be adapted to different systems such as aerial or naval networks the way clothing patterns can be adjusted for different sizes.
The patterns are "standards with experienced guidance of how to apply those standards from a technical perspective and allow for some context, then you can go off to a room, not just with a list of standards but some guidance, and you're more likely to come out with something that is either interoperable, which would be the great goal, or more likely prepared to become interoperable in a shorter period of time," Morgan said.
So far, NCOIC has released two patterns and plans to release two more soon. Each pattern deals with a common challenge or issue, such as how to move information securely through email or from computer to computer, for example.
"What you're seeing is the fruit right now of the level of maturity that the organization is in," Starcevich said. "We started out several years ago developing the technological foundation to do this in a systematic way.
"Our goal is as these patterns are released and put into the public domain, there's going to be an opportunity for vendors to have their capability assessed against the pattern and certified by the NCOIC," Starcevich said.
Morgan said the effort by NCOIC's member companies to develop common approaches to network operations happens in a "pre-competitive" environment - the members discuss technology and how systems can be interoperable apart from a specific request for proposals from DoD for a network system, for example.
"Interestingly, it is industry that is investing in this net-centric capability because it's in our best interest to do that. It's a good business proposition for Raytheon, for Cisco, for Boeing, for Lockheed Martin, for Thales, for EADS, all to be cooperating in things that are very common in this arena," Morgan said.
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