SOA Example - Total Asset Visibility

One of the potential applications of service-oriented architecture (SOA) is something called Total Asset Visibility. As we shall see, there are slightly different interpretations as to what this phrase actually means: what kind of visibility over what kind of assets; and does total refer to the assets (some visibility of all assets) or to the visibility (complete visibility of some assets)? However, SOA seems to be relevant to any of these (overlapping) meanings.

Supply Chain - Materiel

• Improving Asset Visibility
• IBM: Maximo Asset Management

Update (20 July 2009):

The annual processes for verifying the location of certain fixed assets have revealed a significant increase in the levels of discrepancies being reported. In the case of the BOWMAN secure communications system (currently being used by Service personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan), some £155 million worth of BOWMAN assets reported in the accounts could not be fully accounted for, although the MOD estimates that a significant proportion of these are under repair. “At this time of high operational demand, it is more important than ever for the Ministry of Defence to have accurate records of where its assets are, and how much stock it has.” [National Audit Office, BBC News]

Our People Are Our Greatest Assets (Stalin)

I think what he actually said was something like "Our Cadres Are Our Greatest Wealth", but it comes to the same thing doesn't it?

But perhaps Total Asset Visibility isn't just about material, but about people as well. In a post called Big Brother USA: Surveillance via "Tagging, Tracking and Locating", Laurel Federbush refers to the possibility of implanting RFID chips into American soldiers, allowing not only their location to be tracked but also their physical and mental state. Federbush refers to something called the Soldier Status Monitoring Project: this is presumably the same as Warfighter Physiological Status Monitoring, which was planned as long ago as 1997 [Army Science and Technology Master Plan (ASTMP 1997)]; current research now addresses predictive modeling.

Total Asset Visibility from Richard Veryard