This briefing presents the results of NATO MSG-131 and current work of NATO MSG-136 in the area of "M&S as a Service" (MSaaS). It illustrates potential benefits with regards to quality, efficiency, and interoperability that may be achieved by MSaaS and provides an insight how some of the existing challenges are currently being addressed. NATO and the nations regularly use modeling and simulation for various purposes (e.g., training, mission rehearsal, or decision support in acquisition processes). Achieving interoperability between participating systems and ensuring credibility of results require still today enormous efforts with regards to time, personnel, and budget. This is a result of current standards which focus mainly on technical, syntactic and – to a limited degree – on semantic interoperability. Missing are simulation standards and agreements that focus on higher levels of interoperability and simulation credibility. To enable rapid deployment of high-quality simulation environments (with regards to interoperability and credibility as well as required resources) new approaches are required that explicitly address the higher levels of interoperability. Due to many factors, service-based approaches are considered to be very promising for realizing future simulation environments. The combination of service-based approaches with ideas taken from cloud computing is known as "Modeling & Simulation as a Service" (MSaaS). NATO Modeling and Simulation Group 131 ("Modelling and Simulation as a Service: New concepts and Service Oriented Architectures") has investigated the idea of "M&S as a Service" as a 1-year Specialist Team. Instantiated upon request of Allied Command Transformation (ACT), MSG-131 collected national perspectives and experiences regarding M&S as a Service. The resulting "Multi-National Concept for M&S as a Service" provides an overview about the nations’ activities in this area and is a substantial input to ACT’s "NATO Concept of Operations for M&S as a Service". A more detailed investigation of MSaaS and first steps towards possible standardization activities are executed by the task group MSG-136 ("Modelling and Simulation (M&S) as a Service (MSaaS) - Rapid deployment of interoperable and credible simulation environments") which started its 3-year term in November 2014. This briefing presents results of MSG-131 and current work done by MSG-136.

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© 2015 aditerna GmbH
Dr. Robert Siegfried
M&S as a Service: Emerging Approach
and Standards Activities
2015 SISO Fall SIW, Orlando, USA
01 September 2015

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Credits
MSG-131
August 2013 – August 2014
MSG-136
September 2014 – September 2017
01 September 2015 2M&S as a Service (MSaaS)

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NATO MSG-136
• MSG-136 “Modelling and Simulation (M&S) as a Service
(MSaaS) – Rapid deployment of interoperable and credible
simulation environments”
• Tasked to investigate technical services and necessary
organizational aspects
• M&S Services (e.g., Synthetic Environment Service (SES),
Route Planning Service)
• Organizational M&S Services Perspective
• Term: Oct 2014 – Oct 2017
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 3

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From stove-piped systems to
service-based M&S
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 4
What is
MSaaS?
Standards
Landscape
MSaaS
Standards

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“M&S as a Service” vs.
“in the Cloud”
• Cloud = …
– … provisioning of services
– … by one (or more) suppliers
– … for customers
– … based on a pay-per-use principle
– …
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 5
“M&S as a Service (MSaaS)
is a means of delivering
modelling and simulation (M&S)
applications, capabilities and associated data
on demand by providers to consumers.”
[MSG-131/136]

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MSaaS in a Nutshell
• Decomposition of
M&S applications into
functional pieces
(= services)
• Exchangeability and
flexibility as central
design paradigm
• Individual deployment
of all services
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 6

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“Cloud-based simulation is NOT
EQUAL to M&S as a Service”[Sanders]
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 7
Server A Server B
Service
A1
Service
A2
Service
B1
Service
B2
“Traditional” Data Center (SOA)
• User needs to know specific server instance that
executes a service
• No transparent elasticity
Server A Server B
Service
A1
Service
A2
Service
B1
Service
B2
Cloud Computing
• User does not know specific server instance that
executes a service
• Transparent elasticity and scalability
Cloud Middleware
Service
A1
A1 B1

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Illustration of a Future
Service-Based M&S Eco-System
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 8
WES SES
SimSys A
User
SimSys C
User
SimSys D
SimSys B
WES
Service Contracts
(Interface specifications, …)

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MSaaS from the user perspective
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 9

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From stove-piped systems to
service-based M&S
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 10
What is
MSaaS?
Standards
Landscape
MSaaS
Standards

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Major conclusion of MSG-086: gaps are
on higher levels of interoperability!
LCIM
Level 5
Dynamic Interoperability
Level 4
Pragmatic Interoperability
Level 3
Semantic Interoperability
Level 2
Syntactic Interoperability
Level 0
No Interoperability
Level 1
Technical Interoperability
Level 6
Conceptional Interoperability
increasingqualityofInteroperability
Model building /
Abstraction
Simulation /
Implementation
Network /
Connectivity
Standards available
(e.g., TCP/IP, HLA, DIS, RPR
FOM)
Many interoperability
problems, but
- only partial solutions and
- standards are missing!
A. Tolk et al., “Ontology Driven Interoperability – M&S Applications”, Whitepaper for I/ITSEC 2006.
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 11

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Standards landscape
• Generic standards (not service/MSaaS-specific)
– See next slide
• MSaaS-specific standards
– Service contracts (interfaces etc.)
– Service security
– Service identification
• Service orchestration
– HLA, DIS, Web Services
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 12

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Non service-specific standards
landscape (see AMSP-01)
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 13
MSDL
HLA,
DIS C-BML,
FOMs
SEDRIS, DTED,
GeoTIFF, …,
STF, GML, …
empty
NAF, DSEEP,
V&V, RIEDP

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Open issues (examples!)
• Scenario-related standards
– MSDL currently Army-centric, need to broaden scope
– Link required between MSDL and C-BML
• V&V-related standards
– Introduce risk-based assessment (see MSG-139)
– Add V&V to DSEEP (adapt FEDEP V&V-Overlay, tailor GM-VV)
See AMSP-01 or MSG-086 Final Report for more detailed
gap analysis.
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 14

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From stove-piped systems to
service-based M&S
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 15
What is
MSaaS?
Standards
Landscape
MSaaS
Standards

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WHY do we need additional
standards for MSaaS?
• Automation is key requirement for realizing the full
potential of cloud-based M&S
– Enable rapid usability and permanent availability
– Enable flexible workload management
– Cross-cutting requirement along whole simulation lifecycle
(deployment, initialization, execution, analysis)
• Automation = Minimization of manual interaction
– Less personnel required for operations
– More efforts required upfront
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 16

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Service/MSaaS-specific standards
requirements
Service
Specification
Service
Discovery
Service
Orchestration
Service
Initialization
Service
results/
outputs
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 17
• Standards are required along the whole lifecycle
– Service specifications, Service discovery, Service
initialization, Service orchestration, Service results, …
• Standards must come with additional guidance
– Recommended Practices Guides, Examples, etc.
– Support Tools, etc.

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Specification of service contracts
is critical issue
• Service contracts (across all levels of interoperability!)
– Functional specification of a service (I/O, …)
– Non-functional specification of a service (assumptions, constraints,
accessibility(!), …)
• Interface: Use standard modeling languages and set of models to
specify a service, e.g. UML, SysML, WSDL, …
• Open: How to specify non-functional properties?
– e.g., accessibility (=> security constraints, IdAM)
– e.g., assumptions/constraints (=> cp. conceptual modeling)
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 18
Service
Specification
Service
Discovery
Service
Orchestration
Service
Initialization
Service
results/
outputs

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How to define appropriate services?
• How to decompose functionalities into services?
– i.e. how large/small should a service be?
• Document best practices
– E.g. prefer functional decomposition over object-oriented
decomposition
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 19
Service
Specification
Service
Discovery
Service
Orchestration
Service
Initialization
Service
results/
outputs
Service
Identification

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How to interconnect services?
(“behind the scenes”)
• Re-use established architectures and technologies
– HLA, DIS, DDS
– Web Services (e.g., OGC WFS etc.)
– Enterprise Service Bus (e.g., RUDi, see MSG-131 Final
Report)
• Same challenges as today (data exchange model,
latency, bandwidth, …)
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 20
Service
Specification
Service
Discovery
Service
Orchestration
Service
Initialization
Service
results/
outputs

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How to initialize services without
manual interaction?
• Simulation-specific initialization
– Terrain: WFS? WMS? … (OGC suite of standards) … STF?
– Performance data?
– Scenario, Units, Course of Action, 3d-models, …
• Simulation-independent initialization
– Identity and Access Management
– Configuration files (e.g., for automated deployment)
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 21
Service
Specification
Service
Discovery
Service
Orchestration
Service
Initialization
Service
results/
outputs

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Example: Need to create link between
scenario and simulation environment
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 22
Scenario data set
Initial state
(e.g., MSDL)
Course of events
(e.g., C-BML)
Termination
conditions
Simulation Environment
Execution Data Set
Execution-
specific data
Scenario data set
?
?
• Relationships between systems/services
and units
• Date, Host machine(s), …
?
Container
file format?
See also: Siegfried, et al., 12F-SIW-046

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Missing overarching standards
(examples!)
• Reference architecture for MSaaS and cloud simulation
– Technical Framework
– Cloud Management (“remote control”)
– Recommended practice(s) for creating simulation cloud
computing environments
• DSEEP SOA Overlay (see 14F-SIW-048)
• FEAT MSaaS Integration
• Identity and Access Management / Security
– e.g., use Labelling Mechanisms (STANAG 4774)
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 23
Service
Specification
Service
Discovery
Service
Orchestration
Service
Initialization
Service
results/
outputs

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Conclusions
• M&S will follow trend to more and more cloud
computing and on-demand capabilities
– Flexibly combine smaller (fine-grained) services rather
than (statically) deploy large monolithic applications
– Benefit from current developments in public IT sector
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 24

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A Matter of Scale
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 25
20M
40M 183M
Active Military
Worldwide
Reserve Military
Worldwide
iPhone
Sales
Q1-Q3 2015

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Conclusions
• M&S will follow trend to more and more cloud
computing and on-demand capabilities
– Flexibly combine smaller (fine-grained) services rather
than (statically) deploy large monolithic applications
– Benefit from current developments in public IT sector
• Missing standards and recommended practices
• MSG-136 attempts to fill in some of the gaps
01 September 2015 M&S as a Service (MSaaS) 26

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© 2015 aditerna GmbH
aditerna GmbH
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85521 Riemerling/Munich
Germany
Dr. Robert Siegfried
Managing Director, Lead M&S Expert
robert.siegfried@aditerna.de
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