Historically, the military enforced standardization by leveraging its massive purchasing power to mandate its supply chain to produce equipment with interchangeable parts and specifications.
Today, software has permeated into every (civil or military) crucial system, but interoperability remains an unsolved challenge in the high-stake goal for Software Defined Defense. With the relentless pace of innovation in software and current geopolitical urgency, the luxury of waiting for negotiated interoperability between vendors is gone. We must shift to dynamic, modular frameworks, which can deliver immediate, versatile, field-ready integrations.
We present the Germany Army’s strategy for an Open Defense Cloud that builds on multiple vendors, all collaborating in LF, CNCF, and NeoNephos’ neutral OSS projects. We derive the ecosystem strategy leveraging the inherent motivation of vendors to use OSS.
The OSS ecosystem thinking tied with purchasing power is pivotal for digital sovereignty.