Net-Centric Enterprise Services – An Update

Second Government Cloud Computing Survey

By G C Network | April 1, 2009

Earlier this week I had the pleasure of presenting at the Sys-con International Cloud Computing Expo in New York City. My presentation, The View from Government Cloud Computing Customers, reviewed…

Navy NGEN and Cloud Computing

By G C Network | April 1, 2009

I spent half of today in downtown DC at the Navy Next Generation Enterprise Network (NGEN) Industry Day.  In case you’re not familiar with NGEN, this project will be the follow-on…

An Ontology for Tactical Cloud Computing

By G C Network | March 25, 2009

This week I’ve had the pleasure of presenting at two fairly unique conferences. On Tuesday I was in San Diego at the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization (SISO) Workshop. SISO is…

Federal Cloud Computing Roadmap

By G C Network | March 24, 2009

ServerVault, a long time provider of IT hosting services to the Federal government, has been discussing cloud computing quite a bit with their current (and future) customers.  The repetitive nature…

Booz Allen Hamilton Lays Out Path To Cloud

By G C Network | March 23, 2009

Now that cloud computing is seen as a viable technology for the government marketplace, management consulting leader Booz Allen Hamilton is now providing cloud transition guidance. In his article “Cloud…

Is Sun Rising or Setting?

By G C Network | March 19, 2009

Today was strange. First Sun announces it’s open cloud computing platform. Sun Unveils Open Cloud Computing Platform “Sun on Wednesday announced plans to offer its own Open Cloud Platform, starting…

A Conversation with Emil Sayegh, Mosso General Manager

By G C Network | March 16, 2009

Last week, Mosso announced their new “Cloud Server” and “Cloud Sites” offerings. They also exited “Cloud Files” from beta, positioning themselves as a challenger to Amazon. With this as a…

Playing the Cloud Computing Wargame

By G C Network | March 12, 2009

Today at FOSE I tried my hand at balancing traditional IT, hybrid cloud offerings and commercial cloud offerings on a craps table. Just to set the scene, the Booz Allen…

Vivek Kundra Nominated for Federal CIO

By G C Network | March 10, 2009

Mr. Kundra’s quote from the Wall Street Journal says it all: “I’m a big believer in disruptive technology. If I went to the coffee shop, I would have more computing…

7th SOA for E-Government Conference

By G C Network | March 5, 2009

On April 28, 2009, Mitre will be holding its biannual SOA for E-Government Conference. This conference is one of the region’s premier opportunity for federal managers and MITRE Subject Matter…

Net-Centric Enterprise Services (NCES) is about to enter the initial operational test and evaluation phase. NCES are a set of capabilities that support network-centric warfare operations and information sharing. It also allows users to find and access relevant information and to expose data for others to discover. The system employs service-oriented architecture (SOA) to evolve military capabilities and to share information.

The NCES concept was approved in 2004, and Milestone B was achieved in March 2007. Milestone C, which authorizes the initial operational test and evaluation phase, was scheduled for this month. The outcome of the test and evaluation will be used in the Full Deployment Decision Review, which will give NCES personnel the authority to scale up services to support a greater number of users, weapons systems and business systems and to move to full operational capability during a 12-month period. The services will be exposed in registries and available to a larger military user base supporting all branches, agencies and combatant commands.
The NCES capabilities are categorized into four product lines: collaboration, content discovery and delivery, SOA Foundation and the Army Knowledge Online/Defense Knowledge Online (AKO/DKO) portal.

As the NCES moves forward, agency personnel are examining the shortfalls in the program and finding solutions. One area that DISA is currently focused on is federation. The agency is working on how to federate all the effective SOA efforts underway across the Defense Department so they are seamless to the warfighter. The military branches are developing their own services in many instances, and DISA wants to take advantage of those efforts, leverage them in real time and reuse them when appropriate.

(Note: The solutions needed to make NCES successful are also being tackled by cloud computing vendors. )

Web ResourcesNet-Centric Enterprise Services: www.disa.mil/nces/
Global Information Grid Bandwidth Expansion: www.disa.mil/main/prodsol/gig_be.html
Defense Knowledge Online: www.nowaitmedia.com/brac/index.asp

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G C Network