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SMART Ultra-Large-Scale Systems Forum: “Scale Changes Everything”
On March 6, 2008, the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) conducted a forum, “Scale Changes Everything," on ultra-large-scale (ULS) systems in conjunction with Strengthening the Mid-Atlantic Region for Technology (SMART), a non-profit organization dedicated to integrating regional science and technology activities within Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The forum focused on the results of a recent study, Ultra-Large-Scale Systems: The Software Challenge of the Future, that was led by the SEI. Held on the Carnegie Mellon University campus in Pittsburgh, Pa., the event brought experts involved in the ULS systems study together with community leaders interested in the growing trend toward ULS systems.
Steps Toward Network-Centric Operation
According to Input, a market research firm, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) is spending heavily on information technology (IT)—more than $23 billion in 2007 alone. What’s the top DoD priority for those dollars? Network-centric operation (NCO) is at the top of the list.
NCO “calls for a shift in focus to the importance of sharing data and the awareness of data,” says Craig Meyers of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI).
“But today, acquisition and development are system-centric—that is reflecting a single-program, stovepipe view,” Meyers says. “We need to acquire systems so that their integration as systems-of-systems can later occur.”
Meyers, along with SEI colleagues David Fisher and Pat Place, identified six conditions necessary for network-centric operations in a recent technical report.
Cyber Attack Scenarios Test Responses
Imagine how your organization would function without the Internet. Or imagine how your day would proceed—or not—in the wake of a power outage that lasts for days on end similar to the one that blanketed the northeast in darkness in 2003.
If you can, then you’ve imagined a day in the life of Marty Lindner.
As a member of the Software Engineering Institute’s CERT Coordination Center (CERT/CC), Lindner serves as both architect and designer of the worst-case cyber scenarios that an organization, whether commercial or governmental, could face.
Then he tries to make them happen. Well, sort of.