After serving 12 years on active duty as an instructor pilot in the US Air Force, Matt Medley is no stranger to great heights. Even as a civilian he’s a licensed airline pilot and flight instructor, so you could say there’s always a part of him up in the clouds.
Today, in his role as Global Industry Director for Aerospace & Defence at IFS, he’s still intent on flying high – he just happens to be focused on a different type of cloud. This cloud is of the software variety, specifically in the world of Digital Asset Management (DAM) – area that is becoming increasingly prominent across industries due to several factors adding considerable complexity to the task of managing assets.
For example, although the Covid era is starting to wane, global supply chain issues are still persistent. These issues have been enhanced due to the various geopolitical conflicts and crises we’ve seen over recent months, creating tensions by blocking access to shipping lanes and limiting the availability of certain components. In addition, global inflation means costs for labour and materials remain high – putting pressure on organisations to control their margins.
These trends all operate at a macro level. It’s when we get into specific industries that the nuances start to emerge.
Managing critical assets
Defence and Utilities are two key verticals for IFS and offer an interesting comparison. The sectors are similar in that they are both highly regulated and have an emphasis on security in both the cyber and physical sense.
However, there is an obvious and critical difference: the mobility of assets. The Utilities sector largely relies on fixed assets like windmills, hydroelectric plants, coal mines or oil rigs. They’re stationary; you know where they are at all times and are generally easy to identify. In contrast, Defence assets such as a submarine or a stealth fighter are highly mobile and often designed to be hidden due to operational concerns.
“In a Defence context, it’s crucial to know the status of assets in the moment to ensure operator safety and operational success. Real-time information is mission critical.”Matt Medley, Global Industry Director for Aerospace & Defence, IFS
This mobility is where the complexity lies. Commanders at all levels – from the tactical field level up to operational and strategic – require a 24/7 real-time view of the location of their assets, along with their operational, maintenance and mission status. This could include hundreds of thousands of assets spread across multiple different locations – potentially all moving at the same time.
“In a Defence context, it’s crucial to know the status of assets, not three hours ago, but in the moment to ensure operator safety and operational success. It’s mission critical for this information to be as real-time as possible because situations can and do change quickly.”
The safety case is also a useful comparison point. Safety is of course a key consideration in both sectors, but whereas Utilities assets go through a lengthy and robust process to reach a largely static threshold of human safety, the nature of Defence assets puts safety in a different light. It’s all about minimising risk in dynamic environments, which requires a higher standard of asset management.
Enabling ‘anywhere operations’
Effective asset management in Defence all comes down to ensuring military leaders have access to the right data at the right time. Military operations happen 24/7, often across multiple time zones and with simultaneous actions taking place in different locations.
With so many moving parts to keep track of, there’s huge value in having all assets tied into one ecosystem or network for complete visibility. This opens the door to ‘disconnected operations’ or ‘anywhere operations’ – referring to the ability for a Defence force to temporarily disconnect from a data network, execute their operation, then reconnect and quickly re-sync as soon as they are able to do so.
A comprehensive digital asset management solution can provide this capability, allowing disconnections of up to several weeks then reconsolidating assets’ files and historical data as soon as they re-establish connectivity. This ensures all stakeholders have access to “one single version of the truth” with regards to critical asset records such as maintenance schedules, tactical execution schedules, and configurations.
“When dealing with widely distributed assets, commanders need to know where they are, how they are, and the way they’re configured – i.e. whether the asset is suitable for a particular operation. They must then be able to match all that information against their mission requirements. This is what keeps everything in sync.”
This move towards ‘anywhere operations’ represents a significant technological shift for the Defence sector. It involves moving away from the traditional three-tier database model to a re-engineered architecture that enables scale while maintaining security.
“When dealing with widely distributed assets, commanders need to know where they are, how they are, and the way they’re configured.”Matt Medley, Global Industry Director for Aerospace & Defence, IFS
In this context, containerisation is playing a more prominent role. Individual executable files that contain all of the library and configuration files one would need to let users rapidly scale because they can be copied, distributed and installed on machines very quickly without impacting security. As Matt says, “A military operation could have hundreds or thousands of users and assets. Containerisation is one of the most secure ways to scale, which of course is critical in a Defence environment”.
This is the approach IFS has taken with its IFS Cloud-on-prem solution, which helped it win a contract to migrate the US Navy’s multiple legacy mainframe systems into a single, modernised information systems. “The US Navy had grown and accumulated systems over time, so wanted to replace everything with one tightly integrated ecosystem that was containerised for scale and security. Now we’re in the process of standing up the entire US Navy on IFS software.”
Looking to the horizon
Matt identified several trends that will shape the evolution of DAM in the future – both in a Defence setting and wider. Unsurprisingly, the first trend was artificial intelligence (AI), an area that IFS has recently invested in heavily. People are generally familiar with generative AI and ChatGPT in the commercial space, but there are many different flavours of AI that can be applied to Defence.
According to Matt, given today’s customer demands and the ever-evolving nature of modern threats, the race to incorporate meaningful AI is well and truly on: “We see the integration of AI as being critical, almost table stakes already even though it’s so new. The race is going to be so competitive and potentially provide such an advantage that you almost have to get on it while you can before you even know what it is, or you’re going to get left behind.”
“The relationship with the asset itself, how you communicate with it and how it works in your ecosystem, is evolving rapidly.”Matt Medley, Global Industry Director for Aerospace & Defence, IFS
This growing prominence of AI ties into how assets are already evolving, as Matt highlighted the digital evolution of assets that is currently underway. He explained how assets used to be considered one-way, but today are increasingly sharing information themselves; even communicating back to the asset owner and making decisions through AI and machine learning. “The relationship with the asset itself, how you communicate with it and how it works in your ecosystem, is evolving rapidly. They are getting more involved in the decision-making process, so in some cases are becoming more like stakeholders.”
But it’s not all about AI. Matt also identified sustainability as something that, although certainly not the most important factor for military success, will grow in significance over the coming years. “We’re seeing more Defence contracts with specific sustainability requirements in them – whether that be tracking carbon emissions or following responsible sourcing guidelines. It’s important that as stewards of public funds and taxpayer dollars, we try to be good stewards of our environment as well.”
Finally, there’s a current trend towards fraud and counterfeiting. This is becoming a bigger problem as costs continue to rise and people look for alternative parts. However, it’s vital for safety and mission effectiveness that configuration management engines help detect unauthorised parts from going on a critical asset. Just another reason why effective asset management is so important in a digital world.
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