D. Webster, D. Russell, N.Looker and J. Xu, “Motivations for Change within an Enduring Architecture”, Realising Network Enabled Capability (RNEC 08), Leeds, UK, 2008.
Abstract: Network Enabled Capability (NEC) has presented the systems research community with a number of research problems, both technical and social. Our research into the understanding of systems architecture has driven a more detailed understanding of problems associated with the realization of the architectural aspects of NEC. In this paper, we pay particular attention to evolving architectures in an NEC context, and the properties defined by an enduring architecture. This paper examines the application of a staged life-cycle to the properties identified by earlier work as critical for an enduring architecture. In addition, we use this life-cycle to taxonomize our understanding of the motivations for change in systems. We finally, look at a case study of free and open-source development as an example of a distributed development community for networked systems that can help us understand properties of and problems associated with the development and support of NEC. From this research work we have been able to provide a foundation that will enhance the problem structuring of current and future NEC research regarding the direction of SOA based enduring architectures and system maintainability.