Systems Engineering and the Internet of Things

Introduced in 2004, the Data Distribution Service has developed into a mature and proven connectivity standard within the IIoT. Today, DDS is at the heart of a large number of mission- and business-critical systems such as, Air Traffic Control and Management, Train Control Systems, Energy Production Systems, Medical Devices, Autonomous Vehicles, and Smart Cities. Considering the technological trends towards data-centricity and the rate of adoption, tomorrow, DDS will be at the heart of an incredible number of Industrial IoT (IIoT) systems.

To help you become an expert in DDS and expand your skills in the growing DDS market, Object Management Group is offering this DDS Technical Overview webinar series covering three key areas: (1) the essence of DDS and data-centric systems, (2) how to effectively exploit DDS Quality of Service to build applications that perform and scale, and (3) securing your distributed DDS system.

Part I of the OMG DDS Webinar Series will get you started with DDS. We will (1) cover in great details DDS’ key abstractions, (2) introduce the essence of DDS-based data-centric and modular architectures, and (3) clearly position DDS with respect to messaging technologies. After attending this webcast you will know the fundamentals required to start using DDS in your next project. Presented by Angelo Corsaro, Ph.D., CTO at ADLINK Technology and Co-Chair of the OMG's DDS Special Interest Group.

Part II: DDS QoS to Solve Real World Problems presented by Gerardo Pardo-Castellote, CTO of RTI and Co-Chair of OMG's DDS Special Interest Group is available here: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/12231/252387

Part III: Using DDS to Secure Data Communications presented by Nina Tucker, Vice President, Twin Oaks Computing is available here: https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/12231/252391

As data is increasingly accessed and shared across geographic boundaries, a growing web of conflicting laws and regulations dictate where data can be transferred, stored, and shared, and how it is protected. The Object Management Group® (OMG®) and the Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC) recently completed a significant effort to analyze and document the challenges posed by data residency.
Data residency issues result from the storage and movement of data and metadata across geographies and jurisdictions. Attend this webinar to learn more about data residency:

•How it may impact users and providers of IT services (including but not limited to the cloud)
•The complex web of laws and regulations that govern this area
•The relevant aspects – and limitations -- of current standards and potential areas of improvement
•How to contribute to future work

The inability to track customers, partners, accounts, agreements, and policies across complex business ecosystems triggers compliance failures and crisis management challenges that degrade brand value, undermine investor confidence, and chip away at consumer loyalty. Executives have found that efforts to address these shortcomings are more time consuming, error prone, and expensive than they could have imagine. Ironically, these same executives either refuse to sponsor business architecture efforts or are forcing business architecture proponents to “prove” its value on small scale, narrowly defined initiatives. This BrightTALK discusses crisis response challenges at a major financial institution and the role business architecture should play in addressing a variety of related scenarios across a multitude of industry sectors.

This webinar demonstrates the practical realization of standards-based executable modeling in UML, showing its importance for moving forward in a number of, perhaps, unexpected areas, including agile development methods, multi-core programming and model-based system engineering. Today’s Executable UML is based on the OMG’s Foundational UML (fUML) standard, for executable object-oriented and activity modeling, and the Action Language for fUML (Alf) standard, which defines a corresponding textual representation. But this is only the beginning. Additional Executable UML standards are being built on this foundation, including recent ones for composite structure and state machines. Come learn about the growing suite of OMG Executable UML specifications, watch these standards in action and discover the promise they hold for the future.

Today's computing infrastructure is changing dramatically to support new requirements in design and structure. This is no more evident than in the Internet of Things, where new types of machines driven by vast, complex industrial, distributed systems, can’t operate without connectivity. These new machines will transform our infrastructure into smart freeways, distributed power generation and autonomous driving cars, etc., revolutionizing the workplace and our lives for years to come.

These new IoT systems need data-centric technology that directly addresses real-time systems to explicitly manage the communications “data model.” No matter what application – from financial trading platforms, to medical devices, to smart electrical grids, to exploration and production and to transportation – industries need solutions to find right data then communicates it to its intended destination in a reliable, flexible, fast, and secure manner.

To learn more about the proven standard for data-connectivity in mission- and business-critical systems join OMG's webinar featuring experts from the leading DDS middleware vendors; PrismTech, RTI and Twin Oaks Computing

The Object Management Group® (OMG®) Space Domain Task Force completed a second very successful quarterly meeting in Coronado, CA last month during which the Space DTF approved work on several standards initiatives in coordination with NASA, the United States Air Force Space and Missile Center (SMC) Enterprise Ground Services (EGS), and the International Council on Systems on Systems Engineering (INCOSE).

At the same meeting, the OMG Space DTF issued an RFI entitled: Vocabularies, Glossaries, or Ontologies for the Spacecraft Ground Systems Domain Request For Information. The OMG Space DTF is seeking to normalize the terminology used within the spacecraft ground systems domain. We are seeking information on existing or emerging dictionaries, glossaries, or ontologies in this domain. Additionally, the Space DTF is interested in hearing from organizations that might be interested in this topic. The Space DTF will use these responses to either adopt an existing reference or recommend the development of a new consolidated reference

The importance of facing, understanding, predicting and even mitigating uncertainty has been well acknowledged and studied in various fields such as philosophy, physics and finance. In terms of software and system engineering, due to the increasing complex of large-scale systems themselves, and the dynamic and unpredictable deployment and operation environments of such systems, increasing attentions have been given to address challenges of explicitly specifying and modeling uncertainty.
Uncertainty Modeling (UM) aims to promote and enable explicit specifications of uncertainty and uncertainty related concepts, at various contexts (e.g., developing large-scale Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things, for different purposes (e.g., enabling uncertainty-wise requirements specifications, modeling, verification and validation, e.g., facilitating the definition of uncertainty-wise testing strategies), and at different phases of the development of such complex and uncertainty-inherent systems (e.g., requirements, architecture, design, testing and operation).
In the context of OMG, we see a diverse set of uncertainty modeling applications, such as 1) integrating with UML use cases, SysML Requirements Diagram, to enable requirements V&V, 2) capturing uncertainty as part of SysML or UML models to facilitate design and/or testing, 3) integrating with BPMN and other OMG standards to facilitate different kinds of analyses and generations.
OMG’s Uncertainty Modeling Request for Information (RFI) is currently open for responses. The RFI aims to solicit ideas, discussions, comments, recommendations, user needs and experiences about uncertainty modeling. Collected responses will be carefully analyzed and will be used to identify requirements, based on an RFP for an UM will be developed. Instructions for responding to this RFI are specified in the OMG Uncertainty Modeling Request for Information document (ad/16-09-02 (Uncertainty RFI)).
We invite you to join the conversation.

Unified Architecture Framework® (UAF®) is the newest standard presented by domain experts in Object Management Group® (OMG®). UAF is a new version of the UPDM2 standard, and it addresses the needs of military frameworks (such as DoDAF and MODAF) as well as industry.

The Unified Architecture Framework offers a structured approach for managing the complexity of systems of systems engineering within the organization in different levels of abstraction. It also provides an infrastructure to ensure complete and correct specification of systems integration using various techniques such as engineering analysis, traceability, and metrics.

The webinar will demonstrate the complete workflow of systems of systems engineering using the UAF Framework. The workflow includes the activities of defining capability requirements, specifying operational scenarios, providing solutions for operational scenarios, and managing project portfolios required to implement the selected solution.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a complex system of systems (SoS). IoT systems include the electric smart grid, smart manufacturing, autonomous vehicles, smart consumer devices, etc. Technology advancements will continue to evolve to facilitate connection to larger and larger IoT networks and more complex devices. This will be the catalyst that will drive entire infrastructure changes to federal, state, city, and local governments, product development companies, utility and service providers, and even to consumers and their homes. The infrastructure and management will need to be established prior to, or in conjunction with, the smart systems that support them. The future of IoT success is dependent on the application of solid Systems Engineering and Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) principles. MBSE enables engineers to manage the definition of interfaces, allocation of behaviors, evolution of technology, and system security: concepts essential to the successful development of IoT applications. Absent of any industry standards, IoT systems would explode in chaos rather than evolve in a controlled manner.
The Unified Architecture Framework (UAF) provides a means to develop and understand complex system of systems architectures and how they evolve. The Systems Modeling Language (SysML) supports systems engineers to define systems requirements, structure, and behavior throughout the system lifecycle. UAF and SysML combined provide a means of defining complex systems of systems as well as detailed devices and how they work together. IoT success will only be realized through application of up to date, standardized systems engineering languages, processes, and tools.

Cyber threats facing a nation's critical infrastructure, mission-critical systems, or any Internet of Things (IoT) system, demand a cyber infrastructure that matches their combined enormity and complexity. Risk management solutions must be capable of understanding intricate attack patterns and assessing complex vulnerabilities to give stakeholders confidence in their system's ability to withstand malicious attacks.

Currently -- understanding, assessing and managing the risks of complex cyber and/or cyber-physical systems is a very costly and challenging task that requires the expertise of well-trained and seasoned security professionals, a scarce commodity. The traditional approach to risk assessment relies primarily on informal inputs such as documentation and personnel interviews, making this approach subjective, non-comprehensive, non-repeatable, and prone to inaccuracies about the true nature of risks and vulnerabilities involved.

OMG's C4I Task Force Request For Information (RFI) is currently open for response “Cyber Security Protection for Front Line Real-Time Systems RFI” seeking input on a) How to develop Standards to move Tool/Integration community forward to reduce costs and focus on higher quality system development b) What area of standards can be addressed to reduce cost in developing Cyber Security solutions and designs for systems and c) What can be done to integrate current standards that will allow standards based tools to better support design, development and life-cycle support to reduce costs and control costs.

We welcome you to join the conversation.

Business architecture has emerged as the essential vehicle to enable and enrich business transformation. Whether the focus is on shifting to a customer-centered business model, realigning business units to achieve new innovative strategies, or digitizing the business ecosystem, business architecture remains at the foundation of the transformative paradigm. This session will outline the role of business architecture in business transformation and walk through an approach that leverages stakeholder value-driven, capability-centered perspectives to envision and transform the business ecosystem as a whole.

The Object Management Group (OMG) recently led an effort to collect input from a varied cross-section of organizations regarding the challenges and potential solutions to data residency – which we defined as the issues that result from the storage and movement of data across geographies and jurisdictions. In this webinar, we will present our early findings from this study (which will be published as an OMG discussion paper in Q4 2016). These findings cover the types of data that are impacted, the regulations that may result in unintended access to the data, the resulting risks, the way data residency is governed inside organizations, and the technical solutions that can be applied in the future (assuming that suitable standards are developed). We will conclude by indicating to the participants how they can get involved in aiding and steering the pursuit of the OMG’s mission in this domain.

Presented by one of the foremost experts in BPM standards, this session will concretely demonstrate usage of the three leading business modeling standards produced by the Object Management Group (OMG). This session will explore the positioning and core behavioral differences between the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), the Case Management Model and Notation (CMMN) and the Decision Model Notation (DMN). The specific roles and usage of these dominant business modeling notations will be explained and demonstrated using a worked out example integrating BPMN, CMMN and DMN models.
Learning Objectives
What exactly are BPMN, CMMN and DMN?
When is one of these standards best suited for the purpose?
How to use BPMN, CMMN and DMN together?
What are the best practices for these standards?

Presented by one of the foremost experts in BPM standards, this session will introduce the three leading business modeling standards produced by the Object Management Group (OMG) in recent years. This fast pace session will introduce the core concepts, differentiation and business value of the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), the Case Management Model and Notation (CMMN) and the Decision Model Notation (DMN). Explained and demonstrated will be both general methods and best practices, as well as the specific roles and usage of these dominant business modeling notations in the context of business improvement, innovation and transformation.

Learning Objectives:

· What exactly are BPMN, CMMN and DMN?

· Why even bother with these standards?

· When one of these standards is best suited for the purpose?

· What are the best practices for these standards?