DoDAF Enterprise Architecture Feeds and Communicates with
AGI's Modeling and Simulation Tool...

Serco is pleased to announce that we are unveiling a new technology to visualize and animate Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF)-compliant architectures at the next Annual DoD Architectures conference March 17 - 19, 2010 in Tysons Corner, Vienna, VA. We invite you to stop by our exhibit to preview this exciting new technology. We're showcasing a more complete and comprehensive version at the DoD Enterprise Architecture Conference May 10 - 14, 2010 in San Antonio, TX. If you're unable to attend either of these conferences, please feel free to contact us to arrange a personal demonstration.

For many years, enterprise architects have struggled with the challenge of presenting understandable architectures, and our architecture team has taken on this ambition. In 2004, we began research to determine if Unified Modeling Language (UML) objects could stimulate a visual scenario - sort of an animated High-Level Operational Concept Graphic (OV-1) driven by an Event-Trace Description (OV-6c) and we succeeded! Our object animation tool has been the cornerstone for capabilities based assessment, exercise planning and mission area concept of operations development and refinement. In addition, our architecture animation tool has proven highly successful in assisting non-architects to verify and validate architectural findings. Some of you may remember our demonstration at the last DoD Enterprise Architecture Conference in St. Louis. Our approach, however, had some limitations we recently addressed. Mainly, we're not achieving the benefits provided by a physics based modeling and simulation tool.

Our Enterprise Architecture Group's goal is to develop an architecture environment to advance operational concepts driven by an enterprise's vision and mission, their underlying service frameworks, and the systems and software that implements the desired capability in a 100% traceable way. Our current architecture method, developed in collaboration with IBM Rational and the MITRE Corporation over the last decade, uses a UML tool to provide a service-oriented framework to model business services and processes, software services, system models, data models, and ultimately manage and generate software code. To assist in leadership decision-making, we developed applications to data mine UML models useful for presentation and analysis. However, our primary challenge is the static nature of UML models - static models make verification and validation difficult due to the complexity of the modeling language. Through our experience, we've concluded that visual and animated presentation in operational context best fulfills leadership understanding of the architecture and the resulting analysis.

We've successfully demonstrated animated UML models for 2-dimensional visual models; however, these visuals lack process stimuli such as the physics of the environment (i.e., range fans, speed, orbital parameters, etc.) as UML objects move through the process. Because of these limitations, we're developing a tool to feed and communicate UML service-oriented operational models with Analytical Graphics, Inc. (AGI) analysis software for land, sea, air and space - we're joining the strengths of both tools to provide a 3-dimentional simulation of DoDAF models. The UML provides the baseline architecture capture and analysis while Analytical Graphics' tool provides the analytical rigor to analyze the effects of the physical environment. Our concept offers a new evolution in modeling and simulation of DoDAF architectures! To our knowledge, no other company offers this capability.

We look forward to discussing this exciting new technology with you in the near future. You can learn more at Enterprise Architecture in Context.

Respectfully,

Rob Byrd
Chief Enterprise Architect
Phone: (719) 235-4408
Serco Inc.