The Open Group Joins Leading European Manufacturers, Universities, and Technology Developers to Extend MILS Technologies to Enable Rapid Certification and Increased Dependability of Distributed Critical Systems
READING, UK - 25th September 2013 — The Open Group today announced they have partnered with a consortium of leading European security and dependability technology developers, industrial system suppliers and research organizations to extend the MILS architectural approach to support distributed critical systems for aerospace, transportation, communications and other industries. Supported by the European Commission, the Distributed MILS for Dependable Information and Communication Infrastructures (D-MILS) project is investing more than €3.8 million (US$4.9 million) to develop a scalable architecture that automates the verification of critical distributed systems and substantially increases system dependability. This supplier-independent architecture will incorporate newly designed components that provide added predictability and reliability essential for critical distributed applications, along with new tools delivering improvements in developer productivity, system verification costs, and lower costs for maintenance.
MILS provides compositional system construction and assurance, leveraging individually developed and assured components to predict and assure the properties of composite systems, which reduces the cost and time for development, certification, and maintenance of dependable systems. The Distributed MILS technologies being developed in the D-MILS project will make it possible to automate and substantially lower the certification costs for complex critical applications that operate across multiple systems in domains such as Automotive and Aerospace, as well as emerging domains such as Cloud Computing and Big Data analytics.
Coordinated by The Open Group, the D-MILS consortium includes: Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Université Joseph Fourier, RWTH Aachen University and University of York, each of which are renowned centers for research in technologies for security and dependability; leading suppliers of technologies for developing dependable systems LynuxWorks and TTTech; and suppliers of solutions for industry Frequentis and fortiss, both leading European providers of secure and dependable systems for automotive, manufacturing, and aerospace systems. The Open Group is directing the advanced research in the new technologies and tools that will enable MILS to be exploited for critical distributed systems applications where high levels of assurance and reliability are required by industry.
“The D-MILS project brings together experts addressing each of the technologies required for creating a distributed architecture that is predictable, dependable and fully certifiable for complex critical applications,” said David Lounsbury, Chief Technical Officer, The Open Group. “We’re confident the Distributed MILS Architecture will enable new applications to be developed that address the increasing complexities and distributed nature of critical systems in Avionics, Automotive, Communications and other related domains.”
The D-MILS project will address key technology areas including: High-level specifications in declarative languages; Top-to-Bottom automated support for architecture, design, and implementation artifacts; End-to-End from concept through deployment; Configurability of distribution; Compositional verification of dependability and security properties; and Integrated Assurance for Compositional System Certification. The advancements are being driven by industrial requirements and will be validated with industrial applications being developed by partners in the project. The technologies are expected to dramatically change the way critical systems are designed providing important benefits in managing the complexity and improving the dependability of future critical systems.
“The results from the D-MILS project will support systems architects, developers, integrators, operators, and particularly the organizations and people that depend on critical systems, by providing greater assurance that many of the sources of errors that lead to added cost and dangerous failures of critical systems are eliminated” said David Lounsbury. “The development results will mark the first time we will have an industry application architecture that can seamlessly span multiple computer systems with scalable deterministic operation. This will enable more complex systems to be developed for critical applications that must meet rigorous requirements for security and dependability”.
The D-MILS project is financed in part by the 7th Framework Programme, an initiative of the European Community created to foster European research and development of new technologies, applications and industries. The D-MILS project will run through autumn 2015.
More information is available at the D-MILS project website: www.d-mils.org.
About The Open Group
The Open Group is an international vendor- and technology-neutral consortium upon which organizations rely to lead the development of IT standards and certifications, and to provide them with access to key industry peers, suppliers and best practices. The Open Group provides guidance and an open environment in order to ensure interoperability and vendor neutrality. Further information on The Open Group can be found at www.opengroup.org.
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