A Case Study for Business Integration as a Service

This paper presents Business Integration as a Service (BIaaS) to allow two services to work together in the Cloud to achieve a streamline process. We illustrate this integration using two services; Return on Investment (ROI) Measurement as a Service (RMaaS) and Risk Analysis as a Service (RAaaS) in the case study at the University of Southampton. The case study demonstrates the cost-savings and the risk analysis achieved, so two services can work as a single service. Advanced techniques are used to demonstrate statistical services and 3D Visualisation services under the remit of RMaaS and Monte Carlo Simulation as a Service behind the design of RAaaS. Computational results are presented with their implications discussed. Different types of risks associated with Cloud adoption can be calculated easily, rapidly and accurately with the use of BIaaS. This case study confirms the benefits of BIaaS adoption, including cost reduction and improvements in efficiency and risk analysis. Implementation of BIaaS in other organisations is also discussed. Important data arising from the integration of RMaaS and RAaaS are useful for management and stakeholders of University of Southampton

Business Integration as a Service

This paper presents Business Integration as a Service (BIaS) which enables connections between services operating in the Cloud. BIaS integrates different services and business activities to achieve a streamline process. We illustrate this integration using two services; Return on Investment (ROI) Measurement as a Service (RMaaS) and Risk Analysis as a Service (RAaaS) in two case studies at the University of Southampton and Vodafone/Apple. The University of Southampton case study demonstrates the cost-savings and the risk analysis achieved, so two services can work as a single service. The Vodafone/Apple case study illustrates statistical analysis and 3D Visualisation of expected revenue and associated risk. These two cases confirm the benefits of BIaS adoption, including cost reduction and improvements in efficiency and risk analysis. Implementation of BIaS in other organisations is also discussed. Important data arising from the integration of RMaaS and RAaaS are useful for management of University of Southampton and potential and current investors for Vodafone/Apple

The CEOS Data Cube Portal: A User-Friendly, Open Source Software Solution for the Distribution, Exploration, Analysis, and Visualization of Analysis Ready Data

There is an urgent need to increase the capacity of developing countries to take part in the study and monitoring of their environments through remote sensing and space-based Earth observation technologies. The Open Data Cube (ODC) provides a mechanism for efficient storage and a powerful framework for processing and analyzing satellite data. While this is ideal for scientific research, the expansive feature space can also be daunting for end-users and decision-makers who simply require a solution which provides easy exploration, analysis, and visualization of Analysis Ready Data (ARD). Utilizing innovative web-design and a modular architecture, the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) has created a web-based user interface (UI) which harnesses the power of the ODC yet provides a simple and familiar user experience: the CEOS Data Cube (CDC). This paper presents an overview of the CDC architecture and the salient features of the UI. In order to provide adaptability, flexibility, scalability, and robustness, we leverage widely-adopted and well-supported technologies such as the Django web framework and the AWS Cloud platform. The fully-customizable source code of the UI is available at our public repository. Interested parties can download the source and build their own UIs. The UI empowers users by providing features that assist with streamlining data preparation, data processing, data visualization, and sub-setting ARD products in order to achieve a wide variety of Earth imaging objectives through an easy to use web interface

The Cycles of Defense Acquisition Reform and What Comes Next

Many aspects of war and national defense appear to run in cycles. Indeed, the identification and explanation of these cycles is a favorite pastime of military scholars. Historians and political scientists characterize war as alternating cycles of offensive and defensive dominance. The idea of cyclicality may in fact be hardwired into academic discussions and understandings of war. For example, early war theorist Carl von Clausewitz described an ever-changing character of war undergirded by war’s fundamentally unchanging nature. Because the dominant theoretical understanding of war is that it holds a mixture of both fixed and constantly evolving elements, our concept of war may inherently lend itself to the idea of cycles. At the same time, however, the identification of cycles in war and national defense can be seen empirically. For example, the United States defense budget since World War II is notoriously cyclical, running through peaks and troughs in constant dollar terms roughly every fifteen to twenty years. Since peak defense funding periods do not always align with periods of war, it is not the dynamics of war alone that drive cyclical United States defense budgets but a mix of phenomena that includes economic cycles. Hence, in noting the cyclical nature of many aspects of defense, historians must further investigate to determine what dynamics and constraints may be at play in driving the cycle. While commercial technology continues as a driver of acquisition speed, especially for IT; the decentralization of acquisition decision- making and the delegation of decision authority to the military de- partments will likely encourage different priority balances to emerge in different sectors of the acquisition system. The delegation of acquisition authority to the United States Army has resulted in a significant internal reorganization of its acquisition functions. The Army is, for the first time, establishing a command focused on bringing together the wide variety of acquisition stake- holders in one structure, the Army Futures Command. Army Futures Command will bring the system for deciding requirements for new capabilities together with the acquisition process. In effect, the Army consolidates acquisition responsibilities within the service more closely under the control of the Army Chief of Staff, to whom the commander of Army Futures Command will report. The Army Futures Command will pursue a new modernization strategy, built around six major priorities, and hopes to significantly accelerate the delivery of new capability. By centralizing responsibility for requirements setting and acquisition execution in one command, the Army hopes to reduce the friction (and timespan) of coordinating across the Army’s multiple major communities. By contrast, the United States Air Force plans to extend its delegation of acquisition authority from OSD by redelegating this authority down to program executive officers and empowering program managers. This redelegation may reflect the relative maturity of the Air Force’s major programs, such as the KC-46 tanker and the B-21 bomber, where the high level strategic issues are decided (notably in both cases with cost control as the major priority), and the focus is on program execution. Matters of program execution are often best handled at the program level or as close to it as possible. However, less mature parts of the Air Force acquisition portfolio, such as recent efforts to design new systems for command and control and systems de- signed to approach space as a warfighting domain, may use the same decentralized authority to achieve different objectives. Notably, Air Force acquisition executive Will Roper is using the prototyping authority granted by Congress to rapidly demonstrate critical high-performance technologies, such as hypersonic strike systems called for in the National Defense Strategy. Decentralizing and distributing acquisition authority within military departments may lead to a variety of microcosms within the acquisition system where the balance of acquisition priorities is different. Other trends, however, will impact the acquisition system across its entire scope. Another major trend is the increasing functionality of weapon systems defined by software over hardware. The capability seen in the Air Force’s flight lines, in the Army’s motor pools, or in the Navy’s homeports is increasingly determined by lines of code rather than steel and aluminum. This trend has major implications for the acquisition system because it presents challenges to its basic structure, which was originally de- signed around an industrial production model. Software-defined systems break down the boundaries around which many organizations and processes are organized. Software-based systems don’t graduate from development to production to sustainment like hardware-based systems, presenting challenges to government budgeting mechanisms that are leading to calls for new funding categories that can deal with the iterative nature of software development and production. Consider the idea that a system which can send and receive electrons may serve many purposes, such as a communications device, a sensor, a weapon, and an electronic defense system. Software-based capabilities are steadily spreading, and they are a powerful reason why Under Secretary of Defense Ellen Lord appointed a special assistant, Jeff Boleng, for software acquisition. Boleng will “help oversee the development of software development policies and standards across DoD and offer advice on commercial software development best practices to Pentagon leadership . . . .” Perhaps the perfect embodiment of this trend towards software-driven capabilities is in artificial intelligence. How this trend will affect the balance of acquisition priorities in the future is difficult to predict, but one thing seems likely: change will remain dynamic rather than static, leading to continuous acquisition reform cycles for the years to come