New Network Consortium Cites Power Of Shared Systems

Members of the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium, launched Tuesday in Washington, said they want to improve the interoperability of their products so that previously disparate systems can share information. Companies such as Boeing, Cisco Systems, EMC, Ericsson, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Raytheon, SAIC and Sun Microsystems are paying as much as $150,000 per year to participate in the consortium.

Carl O'Berry, NCOIC executive chairman and vice president of strategic architecture at Boeing, cited examples from U.S. military operations in Iraq to illustrate the potential of such interoperability, including the much-publicized assault on a U.S. support convoy that resulted in the capture of Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch.

"Army investigators have decided that the convoy probably took several wrong turns, due to the fact that it never learned that the infantry division it was following had been rerouted," O'Berry said. "What if this convoy had been connected to a commonly shared network and notified quickly of its error? Would that have changed anything? The general answer seems to be a resounding yes," he said.

O'Berry also questioned what the impact would have been had all national leadership, intelligence, air traffic management and emergency response agencies shared access to relevant information during the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"These scenarios and enumerable similar ones have driven a new vision of the future, where the immense potential power of networks is called into action, providing a comprehensive picture of a situation or occurrence such that the best decision can be made in response to the operational imperatives," O'Berry said.

Members of the group also said its framework for network-centric operations could find applications in commercial industries, such as health care.

"In its most basic terms, it means that all systems can operate as nodes in a mobile or fixed network anywhere and at any time required," O'Berry said.

In addition, NCOIC members pledged to tap current technologies such as Web services and XML to help craft the group's interoperability guidelines, which they likened to building codes in the construction industry. The group also said no proprietary technologies would be included.

"The urgency of today's situation has drawn these industries together, whereas in the past they were always competing," said Gary O'Shaughnessy, vice president of defense operations at Oracle. "We hope, as a result, that we can embed appropriate standards into all our products so that the state-of-the-art for tools and process and infrastructure for [network-centric operations] can be accelerated and brought to the customer much more rapidly."

NCOIC will likely expand to include other participants. All open standards and deliverables it produces will be part of the public domain, though the group currently has no release timetable, members said.