US Department of Defense
Greater effectiveness and security when exchanging information between the army command, CIA analysts and governmental institutions, even including the troops in the field: That is the goal of the “Horizontal Fusion” project, the US Department of Defense’s (DoD) response to the central role of communication in modern military deployment.
Horizontal Fusion was launched in January 2003. It encompasses 33 complementary initiatives that ensure an unhindered and controlled flow of information linking DoD employees to intelligence agencies, the diplomatic corps and allies. For the central provision of tools for web conferencing, application sharing and controlling access to information, the DoD puts its trust in the Hyperwave eKnowledge Suite and eConferencing Suite.
Implementation in an SOA
Within Horizontal Fusion, the Hyperwave solutions are part of the US army’s National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC)’s “Knowledge Management in a Net-Centric Environment” (KMINCE) initiative. In August 2004, the KMINCE initiative was officially selected for the Horizontal Fusion portfolio and integrated. Among the crucial arguments in favour of the KMINCE initiative were the immediate operational readiness and unproblematic implementation of the Hyperwave eKnowledge Suite and eConferencing Suite.
The goal was to quickly optimise processes and to provide substantiated bases for decision making at short notice. Hyperwave carried conviction here because of its ability to merge information from legacy systems and to provide the information efficiently via web services, without compromising security. Furthermore, the web-based architecture was in line with the existing structures and the superordinate requirement of creating a fully networked system. Thus, with KMINCE and Hyperwave, the NGIC’s applications and data, including the Digital Production Program, were successfully opened within the service-oriented architecture (SOA) of Horizontal Fusion and thereby made accessible to a wide user base for the first time.
Providing consolidated data sources
Today, thanks to the integration of the Hyperwave eConferencing Suite, users within the Horizontal Fusion framework have extensive browser-based functions at their disposal for collaboration, enabling any number of users to exchange information in real-time. KMINCE’s Collaboration Service, based on Hyperwave, provides all the necessary communication tools and services (text and audio group chat, private text chat, whiteboard, application sharing and video chat) that fluctuating work groups require to be able to handle specific issues and make decisions jointly. At the same time, the Hyperwave authoring tools guarantee that users retain control of information and that only authorised persons have access.
A further tremendous benefit for the DoD is the consolidation of disparate NGIC data sources that, prior to the introduction of the KMINCE services, were distributed between various servers running different software. A multitude of data sources can be used in one portal with KMINCE and Hyperwave: Thanks to a shared search function, all data sources can be accessed at all times in a standardized view and regardless of their internal structure. Previously, these data sources could be used solely by a limited group of users and only by visiting several portals, whereby each portal required a login with user ID and password.
Conclusion
The assessment of users who work with the system on a daily basis proves that the original expectations have been met: Amongst all solutions within Horizontal Fusion, the KMINCE Collaboration Service with the Hyperwave modules was distinguished as one of the best applications. Users particularly value the numerous opportunities for the direct exchange of information and collaboration, which are rated as very important and considered to have been outstandingly implemented.
With Horizontal Fusion, the KMINCE initiative and the Hyperwave solutions, the US Department of Defense has at its disposal today a communication system that promotes the exchange of information from different perspectives and enables the cooperative analysis of situations, using a solid information base, which encompasses all available data. Doug Disinger from the Horizontal Fusion Management Team sums up by stating:
Within the scope of NGIC’s KMINCE initiative for the Horizontal Fusion portfolio, Hyperwave has made an important contribution to the DoD’s goal of improving the shared use of information throughout the entire DoD and with all partners.