Case study
A powerful architecture tool available via an enterprise-wide MOD support contract
Summary
Defence Digital is the digital lynchpin in the Ministry of Defence’s (MOD) operations, supplying global personnel across the MOD with core IT services vital to their role. Many teams from all commands across the MOD, as well as industry partners, must create architectural models of operations and processes or create interactive solutions to encourage coordinated, efficient and safe working. These needs can be short- or long-term, planned well in advance or be unplanned urgent requirements, and could be for one person or over a thousand users.
As such, Defence Digital needed a software product and dedicated support that would be flexible enough to meet these multiple requirements, was scalable and instantly available without commercial delays or constraints.
Company Size
5,000 – 10,000
Industry
Defence, National Security
Products Used
Challenge
A solution was required that could be easily learned, deployed swiftly, that enabled rapid building of models and operational solutions, but would be technically sophisticated enough to tackle a wide range of tasks.
The MOD required a service that would deliver:
Flexible functionality in a single platform.
Speed in deployment and training of users.
A responsive support function.
The opportunity to influence the future development of the software in partnership with the supplier.
Build and maintenance of the IT infrastructure to support the software platform.
The software platform needed to:
Be a no-code/low-code software platform.
Give the ability to build architectures from which stakeholders could gain business insights.
Be architecture framework-agnostic.
Deliver the ability to create digitised operating frameworks.
Enable analysis and presentation.
Solution
CACI and Defence Digital agreed upon an enterprise licensing approach, enabling anyone in the MOD to request a Mood license and access a new Mood repository the same day. This, paired with training provided on request, is all that is needed to start working productively with the large-scale data visualisation platform.
Our support service guides users to maximise Mood benefits, and CACI runs regular user forums to enhance the MOD Mood user community’s knowledge sharing. Many users have now become expert Mood material creators, and due to the excellence of the presentation layer, several solutions built with it have hundreds of regular users who view and work with outcomes rather than building in Mood.
Mood Business Architect (MBA) software also provides a no-code/low-code Enterprise Architecture tool for developing and maintaining models. The product is extremely flexible and allows users to define data structures and relationships as required to model their problem space. The software utilises an SQL Server database, and network hosting ensures multiple architects can access and contribute to the model. A powerful permissions model with the MBA tool also enables administrators to protect and restrict access as applicable.
Once developed, models can be shared with a wider stakeholder base via Mood Active Enterprise (MAE). Models are presented in a web browser and tools are available to make the user experience fully interactive.
Results
There are between 60-100 individual repositories built in Mood at any one time, all supported through the Managed Service. A few of these are:
GEAR, the Guide to Engineering Activities and Reviews:
A mandated source of guidance for the defence engineering community. Built originally by contractors and now maintained by the MOD personnel using Mood software, it replaces an unwieldy set of previous materials with fully digitised guidance, with unlimited user access at around 22,000 logins per year.
DLF, the Defence Logistics Framework: A one-stop shop for defence logistics policy, digitising for the first time a comprehensive set of documents, and supporting re-authoring. DLF has over 52,000 logins a year.
Maritime, Air and Land Defence Frameworks: As Mood-based, high-level capability models of the domains, these provide a vital overview and breakdown of defence capabilities in their respective domains. The reference frameworks save staff officers new in post considerable time and maintain consistency within the FLCs.
Support Chain Information Service Architectural Repository (Formerly LNECA: Logistics Net Enabled Capability Architecture): In operation since 2008, it holds information on all logistics systems, is continuously updated and is the intelligence source for briefings to senior managers. If deleted, it would have to be re-built as it is vital to strategic and operational thinking.
