A critical examination of IT 21 : thinking beyond vendor-based standards

Abstract

The Information Technology for the 21st Century (IT-21) policy endorses the use of a Microsoft Windows NT-based PC in a client-server environment for all Navy computing needs. The rational given for taking this vendor-based approach towards standards is that it will lower costs and increase fleet- wide interoperability. This thesis takes a critical look at the IT-21 policy from an economic, security, availability, procurement, and practical level, and explores the role of vendor-based standards in the Navy computing architecture. It identifies the concerns or deficiencies of an architecture based on products or vendors, and offers an alternative architecture that attempts to mitigate these concerns. It finds that a vendor-based standard will not necessarily increase interoperability, and the selection of Microsoft as that standard could end up costing the Navy much more than anticipated. On first inspection, vendor-based standards make sense for the reduction of costs and the increase in interoperability. However, this ignores the power that diversity gives the end user and it ignores the pending disaster of single points of failure in Navy information systems. This thesis recommends a web-based, 3/n- tier client/server computing architecture such as one using Common Object Request Broker Architecture middleware and the Extensible Markup Language for data presentation. This architecture should make it easier and cheaper to maintain and deploy applications, allow for the dynamic nature of IT, and permit computer applications to communicate with one another no matter what operating system they are using.