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Found a recent press release from IBM quite interesting, in that they announced they will be helping the Finnish Defense Forces (FDF) bring together various military and civilian organizations to better respond to crises. The initiative is called the Network-Centric Operations (NCO) strategy.

NCO is already used in the US, UK, as well as with other European governments, and it gives them a competitive advantage through better networking and communication. Thus the Air Force, Navy, police, hospitals, and other groups can effectively communicate with each other in times of crises. In many cases these groups use different technology and different communication devices, and in the case of large-scale emergencies, communication is essential.

The FDF chose IBM because of its ability to connect almost any technology without having to replace any of the existing systems. The technology that IBM utilizes to make this happen is based on SOA. SOA enables organizations to reuse existing technology, and the SOA that supports the Finnish Network-Enabled Defence (FiNED) is fully expected to transform Finland’s security through better collaboration and communication.

FDF has over 300 legacy systems, and with the IBM solution they will be able to consolidate that down into the tens of systems. This kind of system complexity has become a real problem in regards to security, as there have been reports of systems being broken into and because the systems are so complex, the company didn't even realize it. So where SOA can promote reuse and system consolidation, I see it playing a significant role in reducing complexity and increasing security.

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