Modeling & Simulation as a Service (MSaaS)

Over the last 15 years the NATO STO’s Modelling and Simulation Group is showcasing the most recent achievements of its Collaborative Program of Work at the annual Interservice/ Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) and Exhibition. At the recently completed I/ITSEC 2017 the Modelling and Simulation as a Service (MSaaS) Task Group (MSG-136) organized a Special Event titled “Cloud-Based Simulation: Hype or Reality?” which attracted more than 200 persons, and was chaired by Dr. Robert Siegfried. The event featured a panel debate with global experts (including BGen Sommer of NATO ACT) and a MSaaS demonstration. MSaaS is the combination of service-based approaches with ideas taken from cloud computing. As MSaaS has technological and organizational impacts, it is best defined as an enterprise-level approach for discovery, composition, execution and management of M&S services. This “as a Service” paradigm has to support stand-alone use as well as integration of multiple simulated and real systems into a unified environment whenever the need arises. Leveraging commercial developments MSaaS is a very promising approach for realizing future simulation environments. Under the umbrella of the NATO Science & Technology Organization 16 nations, 6 NATO bodies and 100+ subject matter experts are currently working together to improve MSaaS capabilities and to jointly develop the next generation of simulation environments. The key objective is a flexible, cloud-based services environment to provide M&S products, data and processes conveniently and on-demand available to all users in order to enhance operational effectiveness. If you ever wondered if M&S for military training, analysis, and decision making will be cloud-based in future, the answer is Yes. But this transition will not happen in the future, it is happening right now. This Special Event gave every simulation engineer, project manager, and leadership a true view on the current state of MSaaS, including its potential and the remaining challenges.