Net-Centric Enterprise Services

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Net-Centric Enterprise Services (NCES) is a Department of Defense program, managed by the Defense Information Systems Agency, to develop information technology infrastructure services for future systems used by the United States military.

United States Department of Defense United States federal executive department

The Department of Defense is an executive branch department of the federal government charged with coordinating and supervising all agencies and functions of the government concerned directly with national security and the United States Armed Forces. The department is the largest employer in the world, with nearly 1.3 million active duty servicemen and women as of 2016. Adding to its employees are over 826,000 National Guardsmen and Reservists from the four services, and over 732,000 civilians bringing the total to over 2.8 million employees. Headquartered at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., the DoD's stated mission is to provide "the military forces needed to deter war and ensure our nation's security".

Defense Information Systems Agency United States Department of Defense combat support agency providing information technology and communications support

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), known as the Defense Communications Agency (DCA) until 1991, is a United States Department of Defense (DoD) combat support agency composed of military, federal civilians, and contractors. DISA provides information technology (IT) and communications support to the President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense, the military services, the combatant commands, and any individual or system contributing to the defense of the United States.

Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to store, retrieve, transmit, and manipulate data, or information, often in the context of a business or other enterprise. IT is considered to be a subset of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system is generally an information system, a communications system or, more specifically speaking, a computer system – including all hardware, software and peripheral equipment – operated by a limited group of users.

Technically, the program is based on the concept of 'enterprise integration' from the sub discipline enterprise engineering of systems engineering, which enables the transmission of right information at the right place and at the right time and thereby enable communication between people, machines and computers and their efficient co-operation and co-ordination.

Enterprise integration

Enterprise integration is a technical field of enterprise architecture, which focused on the study of topics such as system interconnection, electronic data interchange, product data exchange and distributed computing environments.

Enterprise engineering is defined as the body of knowledge, principles, and practices to design all or part of an enterprise. An enterprise is a complex, socio-technical system that comprises interdependent resources of people, information, and technology that must interact with each other and their environment in support of a common mission. According to Kosanke, Vernadat and Zelm, enterprise engineering is an enterprise life-cycle oriented discipline for the identification, design, and implementation of enterprises and their continuous evolution, supported by enterprise modelling. Enterprise engineering is a subdiscipline of industrial engineering / systems engineering. The discipline examines each aspect of the enterprise, including business processes, information flows, material flows, and organizational structure. Enterprise engineering may focus on the design of the enterprise as a whole, or on the design and integration of certain business components.

Systems engineering interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design and manage complex systems over their life cycles

Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary field of engineering and engineering management that focuses on how to design and manage complex systems over their life cycles. At its core, systems engineering utilizes systems thinking principles to organize this body of knowledge. The individual outcome of such efforts, an engineered system, can be defined as a combination of components that work in synergy to collectively perform a useful function.

There are nine core enterprise services defined in the Network Centric Operations and Warfare - Reference Model (NCOW-RM):

Net-Centric Operations Warfare describes how the United States Department of Defense will conduct business operations, warfare, and enterprise management in the future. It is based on the information technology (IT) concept of an assured, dynamic, and shared information environment that provides access to trusted information for all users, based on need, independent of time and place. NCOW is an information-enabled concept of operations that generates increased combat power by networking sensors, decision makers, and shooters. This enables shared awareness, increased speed of command, higher tempo of operations, greater lethality, increased survivability, and a degree of self-synchronization. In essence, network-centric warfare translates information superiority into combat power by effectively linking knowledgeable entities in the battlespace.

  1. storage
  2. mediation
  3. user assist
  4. IA (Information Assurance)
  5. ESM (Enterprise Service Management)
  6. messaging
  7. discovery & delivery
  8. application
  9. collaboration

NCES maps these nine services to four product areas:

  1. Enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA) foundation
  2. Content discovery and delivery
  3. Enterprise collaboration
  4. Defense on-line portal

See also

Service-oriented architecture (SOA) is a style of software design where services are provided to the other components by application components, through a communication protocol over a network. The basic principles of service-oriented architecture are independent of vendors, products and technologies. A service is a discrete unit of functionality that can be accessed remotely and acted upon and updated independently, such as retrieving a credit card statement online.

Related Research Articles

Middleware in the context of distributed applications is software that provides services beyond those provided by the operating system to enable the various components of a distributed system to communicate and manage data. Middleware supports and simplifies complex distributed applications. It includes web servers, application servers, messaging and similar tools that support application development and delivery. Middleware is especially integral to modern information technology based on XML, SOAP, Web services, and service-oriented architecture.

Enterprise application integration (EAI) is the use of software and computer systems' architectural principles to integrate a set of enterprise computer applications.

Enterprise architecture (EA) is "a well-defined practice for conducting enterprise analysis, design, planning, and implementation, using a comprehensive approach at all times, for the successful development and execution of strategy. Enterprise architecture applies architecture principles and practices to guide organizations through the business, information, process, and technology changes necessary to execute their strategies. These practices utilize the various aspects of an enterprise to identify, motivate, and achieve these changes."

Enterprise software, also known as enterprise application software (EAS), is computer software used to satisfy the needs of an organization rather than individual users. Such organizations include businesses, schools, interest-based user groups, clubs, charities, and governments. Enterprise software is an integral part of a (computer-based) information system.

A mashup, in web development, is a web page or web application that uses content from more than one source to create a single new service displayed in a single graphical interface. For example, a user could combine the addresses and photographs of their library branches with a Google map to create a map mashup. The term implies easy, fast integration, frequently using open application programming interfaces and data sources to produce enriched results that were not necessarily the original reason for producing the raw source data. The term mashup originally comes from British - West Indies slang meaning to be intoxicated, or as a description for something or someone not functioning as intended. In recent English parlance it can refer to music, where people seamlessly combine audio from one song with the vocal track from another—thereby mashing them together to create something new.

A federal enterprise architecture framework (FEAF) is the U.S. reference enterprise architecture of a federal government. It provides a common approach for the integration of strategic, business and technology management as part of organization design and performance improvement.

System Architect software

Unicom System Architect is an enterprise architecture tool that is used by the business and technology departments of corporations and government agencies to model their business operations and the systems, applications, and databases that support them. System Architect is used to build architectures using various frameworks including TOGAF, ArchiMate, DoDAF, MODAF and NAF. System Architect is developed by UNICOM Systems, a division of UNICOM Global, a United States-based company.

A service delivery platform (SDP) is a set of components that provides a service(s) delivery architecture for a type of service delivered to consumer, whether it be a customer or other system. Although it is commonly used in the context of telecommunications, it can apply to any system that provides a service. Although the TM Forum (TMF) is working on defining specifications in this area, there is no standard definition of SDP in industry and different players define its components, breadth, and depth in slightly different ways.

The British Ministry of Defence Architecture Framework (MODAF) is an architecture framework which defines a standardised way of conducting enterprise architecture, originally developed by the UK Ministry of Defence.

Oracle Fusion Middleware consists of several software products from Oracle Corporation. FMW spans multiple services, including Java EE and developer tools, integration services, business intelligence, collaboration, and content management. FMW depends on open standards such as BPEL, SOAP, XML and JMS.

Enterprise modelling

Enterprise modelling is the abstract representation, description and definition of the structure, processes, information and resources of an identifiable business, government body, or other large organization.

Oracle WebCenter is Oracle's portfolio of user engagement software products built on top of the JSF-based Oracle Application Development Framework. There are three main products that make up the WebCenter portfolio and they can be purchased together as a suite or individually:

Web-oriented architecture (WOA) was coined in 2006 by Nick Gall of the Gartner's group. It is a software architecture style that extends service-oriented architecture (SOA) to web-based applications. WOA was originally created by many web applications and sites, such as social websites and personal websites.

Enterprise Architecture Assessment Framework

The Enterprise Architecture Assessment Framework (EAAF) is created by the US Federal government Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to allow federal agencies to assess and report their enterprise architecture activity and maturity, and to advance the use of enterprise architecture in the federal government.

Web data services refers to service-oriented architecture (SOA) applied to data sourced from the World Wide Web and the Internet as a whole. Web data services enable maximal mashup, reuse, and sharing of structured data, semi-structured information, and unstructured information.

DevOps is a set of software development practices that combines software development (Dev) and information technology operations (Ops) to shorten the systems development life cycle while delivering features, fixes, and updates frequently in close alignment with business objectives.

Robot as a service is a cloud computing unit that facilitates the seamless integration of robot and embedded devices into Web and cloud computing environment. In terms of service-oriented architecture (SOA), a RaaS unit includes services for performing functionality, a service directory for discovery and publishing, and service clients for user's direct access. The current RaaS implementation facilitates SOAP and RESTful communications between RaaS units and the other cloud computing units. Hardware support and standards are available to support RaaS implementation. Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS) defines implementation constraints to enable secure Web Service messaging, discovery, description, and eventing on resource-constrained devices between Web services and devices.