September 28, 2004: Defense Contractors Form Consortium for Network Centric Operations

A group of 28 US companies, including Boeing; Cisco Systems; Factiva, a joint venture of Dow Jones and Reuters; General Dynamics; Hewlett-Packard; Honeywell; I.B.M.; Lockheed Martin; Microsoft; Northrop Grumman; Oracle; Raytheon; and Sun Microsystems announce the formation of the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC). [Business Wire, 9/28/2004; NCOIC, 3/24/2005] The consortium’s vision is: “Industry working together with our customers to provide a Network Centric environment where all classes of information systems interoperate by integrating existing and emerging open standards into a common evolving global framework that employs a common set of principles and processes.” [NCOIC, 3/24/2005] The NCOIC’s work will help the military achieve its goal (see July 27, 2001) (see April 7, 2004) to create a “network-centric environment” comprised of integrated network systems that will allow data to be transferred at very high speeds to all levels of the military. [NCOIC, 3/24/2005]