Marine Corps issues SOA RFI

The Marine Corps is looking for a few good vendors who can provide information about the governance development and operation of service-oriented architectures.

The corps has published a request for information April 2 that seeks insight, ideas, initiatives and processes. The corps would like to implement SOA at the enterprise level ? which the service defines as everything external to the Marine Air Ground Task Force ? and as far down into the tactical level as possible.

However, the corps is worried about doing a poor job. "If not implemented correctly, the transition to a SOA will greatly disrupt operations at the tactical and enterprise level, increase costs and adversely effect [sic] combat efficiency," the RFI states. "Because SOA is a relatively new concept to the Marine Corps, [corps] personnel do not have depth of knowledge and experience that is available in the commercial sector concerning the governance, development and operations of a SOA."

Michael Hardy writes for Federal Computer Week, an 1105 Government Information Group publication.