The Net-Centricity challenge is insurmountable with one of the many traditional approaches to integration such as platform homogeneity, point-to-point integration, or even message-broker middleware (or EAI - Enterprise Application Integration).
The message broker middleware approach resolves the “N2 problem” by introducing a middleware “hub” that serves as the data or message handling intermediary. Instead of communicating with one another using unique one-off interfaces, the systems inter-operate through data or messages brokered by the centralized middleware hub. This “hub and spoke” approach, referred to as Enterprise Application Integration (EAI), is implemented using commercial products such as MQSeries, Tibco, BEA WebLogic, and webMethods. Although effective in well defined and limited enterprise settings, this approach is centralized, technology dependent, and platform-centric, rather than distributed, open, and Net-Centric. It offers limited scalability and adaptability that is insufficient for large-scale, cross enterprise, Net-Centric environments such as the DoD and the greater intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) community. Although this seems completely obvious to most enterprise architect professionals, large government programs such as the Distributed Common Ground Station Integration Backbone (DIB) are currently developing and fielding a hub and spoke broker architecture.
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