A New Conceptual Framework for Net-Centric, Enterprise-Wide, System-of-Systems Engineering

Dr. Jeremy Kaplan, Director of the Center for Information Technology Standards

7/17/2008
(Original Publish Date: 6/1/2006)

In large endeavors in business and war, competitive advantage often requires capabilities that result from the interoperability of many systems and the integration of many processes. To succeed in these endeavors, enterprises seek to create and maintain their “best” capabilities (considering performance, cost, risk, and agility) under rapidly evolving circumstances. While achieving the best capabilities within budget and schedule constraints may be straightforward for individual systems with documented performance requirements, it is more difficult to achieve for functions that are enabled by multiple systems (i.e., systems-of-systems) and even more difficult to achieve across large, multi-functional enterprises.