Finding Services for an Open Architecture: A Review of Existing Applications and Programs in PEO C4I

This report provides an overview of a study that was intended to lay the groundwork for the U.S. Navys Program Executive Office, Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence PEO C4I, toward the service-based concept of an open architecture. Building on previous work for PEO C4I that speaks to the flexibility and costeffectiveness of service-oriented architecture SOA, the study investigated the potential services that could be used as part of an SOA. Toward this goal, this document presents a summary of recommended services and strategic recommendations for selecting those services for which significant improvements in agility and efficiency are possible. Also included are a number of recommendations selected to fundamentally improve PEO C4Is ability to reconfigure its information technology IT system to support change. This research was sponsored by PEO C4I and was designed with the needs of the sponsor in mind. This document may be of interest to anyone in the Navy involved in the development of services and open architecture standards, as well as the wider U.S. Department of Defense DoD community currently considering the benefits of open architectures in terms of aiding the rapid acquisition of IT. Since the completion of our research, PEO C4I has published a PEO C4I Services Catalog that reflects the description, functionality, and features of C4I services. That document was not finalized at the time of this study. This research was conducted within the Acquisition and Technology Policy Center of the RAND National Defense Research Institute,a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community.