Ultra-Large-Scale Systems: The Software Challenge of the Future is the product of a 12-month study of ultra-large-scale (ULS) systems software led by the SEI in 2005-2006. The study brought together experts in software and other fields to examine the consequences of rapidly increasing scale in software-reliant systems. The report detailed a broad, multi-disciplinary research agenda for developing the ultra-large-scale systems of the future.

The study was funded by the U.S. Army. “Software makes possible increased situational awareness by providing sensors into networks that allow commanders and soldiers to see first, act first, and act decisively,” says Claude M. Bolton, Jr., former assistant secretary of the Army (Acquisition, Logistics & Technology). But the Army’s demands for software have rapidly outpaced its ability to manage software acquisition. “We need better tools to meet future challenges,” says Bolton, “and neither industry nor government is working on how to do things light-years faster and cheaper. How can future systems be built reliably if we can’t even get today’s systems right?”

“The DoD has a goal of information dominance,” says Linda M. Northrop, who led the study for the SEI. “Achieving this goal depends on the availability of increasingly complex systems characterized by thousands of platforms, sensors, decision nodes, weapons, and users, connected through heterogeneous wired and wireless networks. These systems will be ULS systems. Although they will comprise far more than just software,” says Northrop, “it is software that fundamentally will make possible the achievement of the DoD’s goal. Yet software is the least well understood and the most problematic element of our largest systems today. Our current understanding of software and our software development practices will not meet the demands of the future. To make significant progress in the size and complexity of systems that can be built and deployed successfully, we require a culture shift. In this report, we identified the kinds of research that will effect such a culture shift.”