36. The NII can be viewed as an evolving, multi national military "Intranet" - a "Federation-of-Systems" (FoS) - interoperating seamlessly to provide information to anyone, anywhere, anytime; if appropriately authorised. Similar to the Internet-driven Information Age transformation that is occurring world-wide, so will the NII support the transformation of mission capabilities of NATO nations, NATO, and coalition partners. The NII can be defined as: " A federation of systems, formed by the synergistic amalgamation of a dynamic set of globally interconnected, multi-national, autonomous systems, each comprised of networking and information infrastructure components, providing information capabilities, associated processes, and personnel for collecting, processing, storing, disseminating and managing information to authorised users on demand, on an end-to-end basis. "

37. The NII can be looked at from three points of view.

38. It is thought that the NII will be comprised of both owned and leased communication an computing systems, information services, software, data, security services, and other associated capabilities necessary to achieve Information Superiority for the Nations and organisations contributing to the NII. The NII includes service interfaces between participants including NATO nations, NATO agencies, coalition partners, and non-NATO users including potential participation from Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), civilian police, emergency services, and local governmental groups. The NII provides capabilities from all operating locations (e.g. government facilities, headquarters, posts, camps, stations, facilities, mobile platforms, deployed sites, and agencies).

39. The NII will also be made of service-based systems provided by multiple sovereign nations as well as NATO itself and will operate on a co-operative basis. It encompasses not only the physical and personnel resources necessary to plan, implement, and operate the actual infrastructure, but also includes the necessary agreed processes to ensure continued coherent evolution and effectiveness of the NII. The infrastructure will be a dynamic heterogeneous entity with configuration changing with the environment and technological advances. This environment is considerably different from a national-only environment and will therefore require greater emphasis on standardisation and interoperability, not only for equipment but also in management methodologies including Service Level Agreement (SLA) management.

40. Inclusion of a service-based system within the NII does not imply ownership or control by any entity other than the contributor. Contributed systems are independently managed and controlled by their owners within the framework of the Federation-of-Systems (FoS), which is a concept explained later in the Chapter. However inclusion of a system within the NII does imply that the contribution will comply with agreed NII community policies, security requirements, and procedures.

41. The strategy for developing the networking and information sharing aspects of NNEC focuses on the 'joining together' of networking systems and core information systems from NATO and NATO nations, to form a Federation-of-Systems (FoS) capability that implements the NII. The FoS concept is used here to refer to a set of different systems, which are not centrally managed, but are so connected or related so as to produce results beyond those achievable by the individual systems alone. In effect, the NII is to be made up of a combination of national Networking and Information Infrastructures segments and a NATO Networking and Information Infrastructure (NNII), which together will provide capabilities that no one system can provide by itself. The need for the NII is consistent with the tenets of NNEC, which have evolved from earlier concepts^[5], which are outlined below:

42. Definition and term: Federation-of-Systems (FoS) : A Federation-of-Systems is a System-of-systems but one managed without central authority Constituent systems are independently managed and have a purpose of their own.

43. The strategy for developing the networking and information sharing aspects of NNEC focuses on the "joining together" of networking systems and core information systems from NATO and NATO nations, to form a Federation-of-Systems (FoS) capability that implements the NII. The FoS concept is used here to refer to a set of different systems, which are not centrally managed, but are so connected or related so as to produce results beyond those achievable by the individual systems alone. In effect, the NII is to be made up of a combination of national Networking and Information Infrastructures segments and a NATO Networking and Information Infrastructure (NNII), which together will provide capabilities that no one system can provide by itself.

44. The Internet is the best known example today of a Federation-of-Systems. There is no central control, and participation is through collaboration and co-operation to meet the objectives of the federation. A FoS is characterised by a greater degree of autonomy, heterogeneity, and distribution than is found in a system-of-systems (SoS) approach, which also involves the "joining together" of systems, but allows for a degree of centralised control. Although it is thought that the NII will operate as a FoS, it is also possible that there may be times when nations may wish to allow for the centralised management of segments of their systems, in order to meet shared operational objectives. It is important that the implementation of the NII allow for this possibility.

45. The need to support national autonomy in the implementation and operation of the NII forces the adoption of participation models capable of supporting a flexible, adaptable approach to participation in the NII. It is clear that the successful implementation of the NII will require architectures, technical solutions, and operational procedures beyond that which any single nation will require or can provide.

46. Definition and term: Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) : An architecture within which functions are defined as independent services with well-defined interfaces which can be called separately or in defined sequences to form business processes. The interface is the focus and is defined in terms of the required parameters and the nature of the result when the service is invoked. A SOA enables services to be published, discovered and utilized.

47. The strategy for developing future C3 capabilities is based on the Capability-Based Planning (CBP) approach. A capabilities-based paradigm focuses more on how an adversary might fight than on who the adversary might be and where a war might occur. It requires us to identify capabilities that military forces will need to deter and defeat a particular type of adversary. This approach involves a functional analysis of operational requirements, leading to the identification of capabilities required to accomplish a mission. Once the required capability inventory is defined, the most cost effective and efficient options to satisfy these requirements are sought. This process involves the mapping of operational capability requirements to a supporting set of system functional requirements, which identifies the system capabilities required to support a mission.

48. The CBP methodology builds on the CBP approach introduced as part of the 2003 NATO Defence Requirements Review processes and the CBP planning approach used within the NATO Overarching Architecture and provides a new approach to conducting NATO C3 planning.

49. While the concept of CBP is key to the identification of required system functionality, the concept of Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs) is key to meeting those requirements and is an essential part of the overall strategy.

50. SOAs provide a flexible modular approach for implementing system functional requirements in the form of services. This strategy for developing future C3 capabilities responds to the need to for a flexible, modular approach for meeting future Consultation and C2 requirements.

51. The use of SOAs has emerged as a major trend within the commercial sector and among nations developing NNEC type capabilities, because of the flexibility they provide in sharing information and information processing capabilities. SOAs provide mechanisms for using existing information services as well as providing a basis for developing new more advanced information services, utilising existing services. Such mechanisms will allow many Consultation and C2 needs to be satisfied by linking together existing information services in a modular, flexible fashion that can be readily adapted to changing operational needs. The flexibility provided through the use of SOAs is particularly well suited to supporting the needs of coalition based Network-Centric Operations.

52. The Information and Integration component of the NII is characterised by the use of Service Oriented Architectures to expose software functions as consumable services that can be discovered and invoked across the network. The use of SOAs ease application and data sharing and provide a flexible mechanism for reusing existing services to enable the development of new, value-added information services.

53. A primary goal of the SOA approach is to make information resources available to all consumers on the network and support the efficient discovery and delivery of that information to the consumer.

54. The use of the SOA approach requires that we adopt a common Net-Centric Data strateg to ensure that we make information visible, accessible, understandable and interoperable with other sources of information. Trusting the information we get and trusting that the information we supply will be handled correctly will be a key success factor. The ability to provide flexible, secure, role-based, information access that can be quickly configured to support changing policy is foundational to the long-term success of the NII.

55. Realising the benefits of the SOA approach will require that we agree on a standardised set of foundational services covering such areas as service discovery security, metadata management, identify management, service management and mediation.

56. The need for improved system interoperability is clearly spelled out in the latest versions of the NATO Interoperability Management Plan (NIMP) and NATO Architecture Framework (NAF).

57. In order to achieve the principle of flexible interoperability, a change of focus is required: from the idea of standalone, stovepipe systems (i.e. platform-oriented) to the idea of shareable, universal information (i.e. service-oriented).

58. This "service oriented" architectural view indicates that rather than information being inextricably tied to a particular system, it should be available to all who need it (and have rights to it). Information would still have "consumers" and "producers" but the assignment of these roles would be dynamic and would cross system boundaries.

59. The guiding principle of information services is the adoption of service oriented architecture (SOA) and where appropriate, the implementation of web services.

60. A simple definition of an SOA is "a broad set of concepts that enable units of functionality to be provided and consumed as 'services'. This essentially simple concept can and should be used, not just for web services, but also at each tier of the architecture, in order to compartmentalise and provide flexibility". For example, an SOA allows the use of 'thin clients' by tailoring the provided services to the needs and capabilities of a consumer. This allows a more flexible use of hardware resources and is more cost-effective (i.e. a reduced number of software licenses).

61. In an SOA, loosely coupled systems view one another as "services", accessible via a standard interface without knowledge of the underlying implementation of the service. A "registry" manages and directs the interactions between services. Data is exchanged in a common format using standard protocols, which helps to ensure compatibility. All this allows user-to-system or direct system-to-system interactions that have not previously been generally feasible.

62. The concept of every system viewing others as "services" in a loosely coupled manner is coherent with the concept of NNEC being a FoS. From an SOA perspective, it means that IIS is to be thought of as a federation of services, where any NATO or national information system will be autonomous and provide specific services by means of implementing a standardised service interface.

63. Thus, it will be necessary not only to define the standards to regulate the implementation of such interfaces but also a set of service interoperability points that will facilitate the interoperation of similar ser ices provided by different nations in a seamless manner.