Net-Centric Adapter for Legacy Systems

The Net-Centric Adapter for Legacy Systems (NCALS) is a software technology that makes legacy system data and services available in near real-time to the military Global Information Grid (GIG). The intent of NCALS is to lower the cost and risk, and to decrease the time required for legacy systems to comply with U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) net-centric technical standards. Many different systems could use a common, configurable NCALS software component to comply with these standards. The benefit to the warfighter is improved interoperability with joint and coalition forces. NCALS enables legacy systems to move to a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) compatible with the GIG without requiring a costly and risky re-architecture of their legacy software. In addition, NCALS enables mission critical systems such as weapon systems to segregate their real-time, mission critical software from enterprise integration software. This maintains the safety and security required by such systems, while accommodating rapid changes in Internet-based, enterprise technologies. This paper will discuss the legacy system challenge and describe a technology prototype developed by the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Dahlgren to realize the NCALS concept. The prototype works automatically, behind the scenes, to expose legacy data to the GIG and to make GIG data available to legacy systems.