3. The structure of the NC3TA was based on a platform centric environment. This structure withstood the test of time, as indicated in the seven published versions of the NC3TA. At the Prague Summit in November 2002, Heads of State agreed to the Prague Capability Commitment (PCC) which put into place a series of measures to increase the deployability and usability of NATO forces. Two major measures to reach these goals are The NATO Response Force (NRF) and net-enabled capabilities. NATO, Nations and industry are all adopting Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach, and its loose coupling, system development as a means to achieve net-enabled capabilities. It is recognised that the required changes cannot be implemented overnight. A controlled transformation through a series of maturity stages need to be achieved, responding to evolutionary sets of operational objectives. This gradual transformation to a network enabled environment based on SOA leading to better support for the NRF resulted in the need to restructure the NC3TA.

4. During the transformation to a network enabled environment there will be a need to support both platform centric and network enabled environments for a number of years. Since both of these environments are based upon providing services, this leads to confusion when trying to differentiate what is a service in each of the environment. The distinction between services in a platform or system centric environment and a service oriented environment is described in NISP Annex A.