28 September 2004

Contact: Graham Bird, The Open Group, 415 374 8280 Xt 229, g.bird@opengroup.org <mailto:g.bird@opengroup.org>

Washington, DC - Sept. 28, 2004 - The Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium, (NCOIC), a major international, industry-wide consortium, was announced today, combining the experience and expertise of 28 major companies to recommend a unified approach that would enable sensors, communications and information systems to interact within a global network centric environment.

Founding members are BAE Systems, Boeing, CACI, Carrillo Business Technologies, Cisco Systems, EADS, EMC Corporation, Ericsson, Factiva®-a Dow Jones and Reuters Company, Finmeccanica, General Dynamics, HP, Honeywell, IBM, Innerwall, L-3 Communications (Integrated Systems), Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Northrop Grumman, Oracle, Raytheon, Rockwell Collins, SAAB, SAIC, Smiths Aerospace, Sun Microsystems, Thales, and Themis with The Open Group acting as the management company.

The NCOIC brings the best of industry together in a collaborative forum. The consortium will recommend and provide input on the underlying standards and architectural approach that systems and platform developers may follow to enable each platform, system or application to participate in a global network environment.

"Today marks the beginning of an unprecedented collaboration," said Carl O'Berry, newly elected chairman of the Executive Council of the NCOIC. "We've assembled the brightest minds from some of the most innovative companies in the world to bring their insight, technology, and customer requirements forward. I believe that we are on the cusp of profoundly changing the way we use network technology today, in both the military and commercial marketplaces. I am extremely proud to be associated with this powerhouse of knowledge. We understand the Network Centric Operations (NCO) vision, and we are committed to helping our customers achieve that vision."

NCOIC was created in response to customer requests that industry assume a more prominent role in achieving network centric capability. The unique charter of the NCOIC makes it complementary to, not competitive with, those other consortia, industry associations, and government bodies that are also working toward the same goal of enabling customers to move rapidly to network centric operations. Details of the basic infrastructure to enable network centric operations will be the substance of NCOIC collaboration, while still enabling robust and healthy competition across the industry.

The NCOIC has formed an Advisory Council and an Affiliates Council in order to ensure that the NCOIC is well coordinated with all customer activities related to NCO.

"The importance of this consortium lies in its ability to provide a unified approach that integrates everything through the last mile," said former U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology Dr. Paul Kaminski, chairman of the NCOIC Advisory Council. "We've seen the power of the network grow by quantum leaps in the last decade, but we've been impeded by the lack of a common approach that enables our systems to network together as one. The deliverables and procedures from this consortium will provide tremendous capability enhancements to the Department of D