Technology Today issue 1 2008 - Raytheon

onTechnology
NCOIC NCAT: Analyzing Network-Centricity
to Enhance Interoperability
To attain rapid, efficient, cost-effective
functionality, many systems designers adopt
the principles of network-centric operations
(NCO). An outgrowth of the concept of network-centric
warfare, NCO seeks to harness
the power of information and interoperability,
enabled by both policy and technology,
to provide a competitive advantage to stakeholders
in any marketplace. Applying NCO in
practice, however, challenges would-be
adopters to rapidly transform their business,
government or civil agency.
The Network Centric Operations Industry
Consortium (NCOIC) plays an important
role in meeting this challenge. NCOIC facilitates
NCO by identifying existing and
emerging common open standards and recommending
patterns of open-standard use.
To perform this role, NCOIC has developed
a number of evaluation tools, which are
currently being used by global agencies and
governments to identify net-centric requirements
and measure net-centricity.
Raytheon’s Leadership Role in NCOIC
Raytheon, a founding executive member of
NCOIC, provides leadership to the consortium
with more than 20 active participants on
teams and work groups. Governance and
strategic counsel are provided by the executive
council, which is currently led by the
executive council chair — retired Adm.
Robert C. “Willie” Williamson, U.S. Navy —
who is vice president of ICS International
Programs for Network Centric Systems.
Within the tool suite for NCO measurement is
the Network Centric Analysis Tool (NCAT).
NCAT facilitates analyzing architectures,
frameworks and reference models against
industry standards. NCOIC uses NCAT and
other tools in the suite to complete this
analysis and then to evaluate operational
domains to understand the requirements of,
and obstacles to, achieving net-centricity.
24 2008 ISSUE 1 RAYTHEON TECHNOLOGY TODAY
ARCHITECTURE & SYSTEMS INTEGRATION
To measure the degree of net-readiness of
missions and systems, NCAT assesses interoperability
goals as specified in or derived
from the customer mission statement, mission
needs and solutions to needs. NCAT also
helps to measure the net-centric interoperability
of the systems created to meet those
needs. Not only does NCAT provide a snapshot
of the progress in developing system
interoperability, it provides feedback and closes
the loop for iterative interoperability
improvements. A positive NCAT assessment
can provide ample confidence that the system
will work in a network-centric environment.
The original NCAT was spreadsheet-based,
and measured the net-centricity of a concept
or system relative to the net-centric
checklist produced by the U.S. Office of the
Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks
and Information Integration (NII). A more
collaborative engine was developed to support
geographically distributed teams and
improve NCAT’s usability.
The new NCAT v2 is a Web-based tool that
allows users to select from a wide range of
tailorable interoperability criteria. The metrics
derived from using NCAT provide insight
into the level of interoperability resulting
from a design process. Consequently, NCAT
may be valuable in generating or understanding
customer mission models and
domain general architectures. NCAT may also
be useful in evaluating the net-centricity or
net-enablement of alternative options in
trade study analyses. Member organizations
use NCAT to perform self-assessments and to
evaluate potential net-centricity of systems
being developed with their customers.
Two vendors provided engines for the NCAT
evaluation. Microsoft provided a version
based on SharePoint ® team services, and
Pavone provided a Java technology version
through IBM. Each platform shares
common content and offers different
advantages. Both engines use SQL databases
and are Web-enabled. They can be used
in the open Internet or a closed intranet, or
they can stand alone on a single personal
computer. Each program can tailor NCAT’s
questions and prioritize the value of the
responses to suit a particular environment.
Progress can be assessed based on planned
goals and actual results. Data exchanges are
available using XML and other standard means.
NCAT assesses compliance via predefined
questions and multiple-choice answers.
Questions are grouped into tailorable profiles
such as Information Assurance and
Data Strategy. Assessments are performed
by individuals. NCAT can aggregate the
responses from multiple assessors into survey
results. Reporting mechanisms are available
to publish, summarize and quantify the
results. All data is protected using rolebased
access controls, ensuring the data is
kept private and not openly visible. For
more details, visit the NCOIC website
(https://www.ncoic.org/technology/deliverables/ncat).
Instances of both engines are
available for evaluation on publicly available
servers and also on Raytheon internal
servers on ORION.
Status
NCOIC tools are currently being used
together successfully to achieve interoperable
nodes in systems, systems of systems,
or families of systems and to develop recommendations
for various mission teams,
including global aviation transformation,
mobile emergency communications
interoperability, NATO interoperability,
and sense-and-respond logistics.
NCOIC’s work helps NCO stakeholders to
move from their diverse enterprise models
to net-centricity among their applications.
The consortium works to ensure that the
products, concepts of operations, and new
marketplace capabilities for all NCO
YESTERDAY…TODAY…TOMORROW