| DoD / Military SOA Solution Engineering |
Unique Challenges / Unique Responses - Although most of Vektrel's extensive experience in large-scale commercial SOA solution
engineering is directly applicable to DoD / Military SOA solutions, the manner in which SOA is utilized within certain military scenarios
raises a number of unique architectural challenges.
Vektrel is responding to these challenges with investments in key areas of SOA innovation that offer exceptional value specifically in DoD
SOA solutions. The discussion that follows introduces these areas of investment and innovation and offers links to deeper information.
SOA and Semantic Technologies - Vektrel's investments in the fusion of SOA technologies with Semantic technologies is driving
innovations that address the following two key pain points for the Navy, and for the military in general:
The fusion of SOA with Semantic Technologies addresses both of these challenges with an innovative, adaptive and extensible
architecture. This architecture would allow the Navy to roll-out entirely new capabilities to ship-board systems without rewriting vast,
complex applications or re-engineering information technology foundations. Extensions and modifications to knowledge bases and rules
could introduce entirely new system behaviors and capabilities to address emerging challenges.
The same architecture could apply "knowledge" and rules to SOA services that constantly monitored raw data streams for actionable
information and patterns indicating potential threats. These services could allow war-fighters to focus on tactical issues rather than sifting
and evaluating data and information. Event driven SOA background services could respond to detected threat patterns with alerts to busy
C3 personnel while other aspects of the SOA / Semantic architecture responded intelligently to these alerts by re-factoring tactical displays
to highlight emerging threats.
One common SOA / Semantic architecture could offer the Navy the ability to completely re-factor how information is processed and
presented (without code changes) while also intelligently evaluating vast quantities of information for emerging threats. Additionally, this
same architecture would allow ships to "learn" from each other's tactical experiences to rapidly distribute new capabilities throughout a fleet
based on new threat information patterns.
Follow this link to learn more about Vektrel's work with SOA / Semantic Technologies fusion.
SOA / Virtualization Fusion (SOA Survivability Engineering) - Every I.T. professional is familiar with the need for disaster recovery and
its common implementations. However, when a warship is damaged in a manner that destroys SOA foundations supporting critical tactical
systems, there is no time for lengthy manual processes that rebuild lost computing power.
SOA Survivability Engineering is an innovation that emerged from Vektrel's work with Fortune 500 clients that were transitioning their I.T.
landscapes to SOA foundations while concurrently transitioning their datacenters to virtualized server foundations. Vektrel architects
began evolving architectures and design patterns that designed many facets of SOA engineering directly into datacenter virtualization
foundations and began leveraging those foundations in creative ways.
SOA Survivability Engineering allows mission critical SOA foundations to sustain extensive damage and completely rebuild from that
damage automatically (without human intervention) in a manner that preserves SOA architectural integrity (e.g.: preserves the security /
operational / performance and network engineering integrity of the SOA infrastructure). Most importantly, these capabilities would allow
mission critical SOA foundations to be rebuilt ... within seconds of being damaged.
With the Navy's CANES initiative moving naval datacenters to virtualized, SOA enabled foundations, the Navy is positioned to benefit from
Vektrel's innovations in SOA Survivability Engineering (as well as other innovations emerging from the fusion of SOA and Virtualization
technologies). Please follow this link for a more detailed look at Vektrel's work with SOA / Virtualization fusion.
Dynamic SOA Federation - The Navy's transition to SOA based net-centric systems has created some unique challenges in the SOA
Federation architectural problem domain. These unique challenges are associated with the highly dynamic nature of Navy SOA systems
(both afloat and ashore). For example, as ships and aircraft transition into a naval theater of operations they must affiliate their services
with the "federation" of ships and aircraft that comprise that theater of operations. Conversely, as ships and aircraft exit a theater of
operations, they must un-affiliate their services with that federation. The dynamic nature of SOA "islands" affiliating and unaffiliating with
transitional "federations" (e.g.: battle groups, task forces, etc) requires innovation in service discovery, publishing and subscription. It also
requires innovation in the areas of service metadata availability and accessibility. Ashore SOA systems face similar challenges as
coalition clients and SOA "islands" dynamically affiliate with back-end SOA systems.
Vektrel has been investing time and resources to explore architectural alternatives that accommodate the dynamism of Navy SOA
federation. These investments are exploring innovative approaches to service discovery and metadata access that address the realities
and dynamics of Naval SOA systems.
SOA Operational Agility (Security and Service Mediation) - SOA solutions supporting mission critical systems within potential conflict
scenarios must be designed to allow war-fighters to quickly, easily and effectively re-factor SOA security and service mediation (e.g.:
intelligent routing, message filtering and transformation, etc). The solution architectures supporting this operational agility must be
designed to support the possibility that a war-fighter must quickly and effectively re-factor service access parameters in possible combat
scenarios.
The majority of commercial SOA architectures and SOA vendor offerings do not support this level of operational agility. Supporting these
capabilities requires architectural innovation in SOA infrastructure design and it requires a deep knowledge of the SOA vendor community
and the capabilities, limitations and extensibility of their product offerings. Vektrel is investing time and resources to drive innovation in
these areas of SOA operational agility.
engineering is directly applicable to DoD / Military SOA solutions, the manner in which SOA is utilized within certain military scenarios
raises a number of unique architectural challenges.
Vektrel is responding to these challenges with investments in key areas of SOA innovation that offer exceptional value specifically in DoD
SOA solutions. The discussion that follows introduces these areas of investment and innovation and offers links to deeper information.
SOA and Semantic Technologies - Vektrel's investments in the fusion of SOA technologies with Semantic technologies is driving
innovations that address the following two key pain points for the Navy, and for the military in general:
- Technology / Capability Roll-Out -- Rolling out new technologies and capabilities to ships has consistently proven so time consuming
that, by the time capabilities are made available to war-fighters at sea, they are essentially behind the times (no longer state-of-the-
art). - Information Overload - Personnel in ship-board C3 centers may need to respond to threats from an evolving theater of operations that
is receiving data streams originating from multiple sources (e.g.: satellites, E2C Hawkeye, GlobalHawk, AWACS, etc) all streaming
into tactical displays and data stores. Identifying, extracting and acting on meaningful information in this sea of data in the "fog-of-
war" is an ongoing critical challenge for war-fighters.
The fusion of SOA with Semantic Technologies addresses both of these challenges with an innovative, adaptive and extensible
architecture. This architecture would allow the Navy to roll-out entirely new capabilities to ship-board systems without rewriting vast,
complex applications or re-engineering information technology foundations. Extensions and modifications to knowledge bases and rules
could introduce entirely new system behaviors and capabilities to address emerging challenges.
The same architecture could apply "knowledge" and rules to SOA services that constantly monitored raw data streams for actionable
information and patterns indicating potential threats. These services could allow war-fighters to focus on tactical issues rather than sifting
and evaluating data and information. Event driven SOA background services could respond to detected threat patterns with alerts to busy
C3 personnel while other aspects of the SOA / Semantic architecture responded intelligently to these alerts by re-factoring tactical displays
to highlight emerging threats.
One common SOA / Semantic architecture could offer the Navy the ability to completely re-factor how information is processed and
presented (without code changes) while also intelligently evaluating vast quantities of information for emerging threats. Additionally, this
same architecture would allow ships to "learn" from each other's tactical experiences to rapidly distribute new capabilities throughout a fleet
based on new threat information patterns.
Follow this link to learn more about Vektrel's work with SOA / Semantic Technologies fusion.
SOA / Virtualization Fusion (SOA Survivability Engineering) - Every I.T. professional is familiar with the need for disaster recovery and
its common implementations. However, when a warship is damaged in a manner that destroys SOA foundations supporting critical tactical
systems, there is no time for lengthy manual processes that rebuild lost computing power.
SOA Survivability Engineering is an innovation that emerged from Vektrel's work with Fortune 500 clients that were transitioning their I.T.
landscapes to SOA foundations while concurrently transitioning their datacenters to virtualized server foundations. Vektrel architects
began evolving architectures and design patterns that designed many facets of SOA engineering directly into datacenter virtualization
foundations and began leveraging those foundations in creative ways.
SOA Survivability Engineering allows mission critical SOA foundations to sustain extensive damage and completely rebuild from that
damage automatically (without human intervention) in a manner that preserves SOA architectural integrity (e.g.: preserves the security /
operational / performance and network engineering integrity of the SOA infrastructure). Most importantly, these capabilities would allow
mission critical SOA foundations to be rebuilt ... within seconds of being damaged.
With the Navy's CANES initiative moving naval datacenters to virtualized, SOA enabled foundations, the Navy is positioned to benefit from
Vektrel's innovations in SOA Survivability Engineering (as well as other innovations emerging from the fusion of SOA and Virtualization
technologies). Please follow this link for a more detailed look at Vektrel's work with SOA / Virtualization fusion.
Dynamic SOA Federation - The Navy's transition to SOA based net-centric systems has created some unique challenges in the SOA
Federation architectural problem domain. These unique challenges are associated with the highly dynamic nature of Navy SOA systems
(both afloat and ashore). For example, as ships and aircraft transition into a naval theater of operations they must affiliate their services
with the "federation" of ships and aircraft that comprise that theater of operations. Conversely, as ships and aircraft exit a theater of
operations, they must un-affiliate their services with that federation. The dynamic nature of SOA "islands" affiliating and unaffiliating with
transitional "federations" (e.g.: battle groups, task forces, etc) requires innovation in service discovery, publishing and subscription. It also
requires innovation in the areas of service metadata availability and accessibility. Ashore SOA systems face similar challenges as
coalition clients and SOA "islands" dynamically affiliate with back-end SOA systems.
Vektrel has been investing time and resources to explore architectural alternatives that accommodate the dynamism of Navy SOA
federation. These investments are exploring innovative approaches to service discovery and metadata access that address the realities
and dynamics of Naval SOA systems.
SOA Operational Agility (Security and Service Mediation) - SOA solutions supporting mission critical systems within potential conflict
scenarios must be designed to allow war-fighters to quickly, easily and effectively re-factor SOA security and service mediation (e.g.:
intelligent routing, message filtering and transformation, etc). The solution architectures supporting this operational agility must be
designed to support the possibility that a war-fighter must quickly and effectively re-factor service access parameters in possible combat
scenarios.
The majority of commercial SOA architectures and SOA vendor offerings do not support this level of operational agility. Supporting these
capabilities requires architectural innovation in SOA infrastructure design and it requires a deep knowledge of the SOA vendor community
and the capabilities, limitations and extensibility of their product offerings. Vektrel is investing time and resources to drive innovation in
these areas of SOA operational agility.
