This presentation was created for the SATURN conference series and does not necessarily reflect the positions and views of the Software Engineering Institute.

The goal of employing open-architecture systems for Naval use is to foster competition and innovation to improve performance and affordability through the use of modular designs. At the heart of open-architecture systems are architectural concepts, services, and tools that are maturing as standards-based, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) frameworks; component-based and service-oriented middleware; and model-driven engineering technologies.

Despite substantial advances in these technologies during the past decade, however, key challenges must be addressed before we can affordably and dependably build next-generation open-architecture systems. This talk will therefore provide a survey of key characteristics that make architectures “open”; examine the evolution of standards and enabling technologies that are relevant for open architectures; summarize new challenges for open-architecture systems arising from growth of scale, complexity, and expanded threat spectrum; and evaluate strategies for overcoming these challenges as well as limitations with existing open-architecture efforts. Examples from the shipboard computing domain will be used to illustrate key points.

PDF [1258 KB]

PRESENTATION