The broad scope of Cloud Computing is creating a technology, business, sociolo- cal, and economic renaissance. It delivers the promise of making services available quickly with rather little effort. Cloud Computing allows almost anyone, anywhere, at anytime to interact with these service offerings. Cloud Computing creates a unique opportunity for its users that allows anyone with an idea to have a chance to deliver it to a mass market base. As Cloud Computing continues to evolve and penetrate different industries, it is inevitable that the scope and definition of Cloud Computing becomes very subjective, based on providers' and customers' persp- tive of applications. For instance, Information Technology (IT) professionals p- ceive a Cloud as an unlimited, on-demand, flexible computing fabric that is always available to support their needs. Cloud users experience Cloud services as virtual, off-premise applications provided by Cloud service providers. To an end user, a p- vider offering a set of services or applications in the Cloud can manage these off- ings remotely. Despite these discrepancies, there is a general consensus that Cloud Computing includes technology that uses the Internet and collaborated servers to integrate data, applications, and computing resources. With proper Cloud access, such technology allows consumers and businesses to access their personal files on any computer without having to install special tools. Cloud Computing facilitates efficient operations and management of comp- ing technologies by federating storage, memory, processing, and bandwidth.

The emergence of Enterprise services has triggered a major paradigm shift in distributed computing: from Object-Oriented Architecture (OOA) to Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). As the need grows to incorporate and exchange information across wire-line and wireless networks, so grows the necessity to establish an infrastructure for high-distribution communities in a timely and safe manner. Network-Centric Service-Oriented Enterprise (NSCOE) is seen as heralding the next generation of mainstream Enterprise-business information collaboration solution that can enforce information and decision superiority in the decentralized, loosely-coupled, and highly interoperable service environments. Network-Centric Service Oriented Enterprise establishes a system-of-systems (SoS) view of information technologies, offering a synergistic combination of data and information-processing capacity upon an innovative networked-management framework.

The broad scope of Cloud Computing is creating a technology, business, sociolo- cal, and economic renaissance. It delivers the promise of making services available quickly with rather little effort. Cloud Computing allows almost anyone, anywhere, at anytime to interact with these service offerings. Cloud Computing creates a unique opportunity for its users that allows anyone with an idea to have a chance to deliver it to a mass market base. As Cloud Computing continues to evolve and penetrate different industries, it is inevitable that the scope and definition of Cloud Computing becomes very subjective, based on providers' and customers' persp- tive of applications. For instance, Information Technology (IT) professionals p- ceive a Cloud as an unlimited, on-demand, flexible computing fabric that is always available to support their needs. Cloud users experience Cloud services as virtual, off-premise applications provided by Cloud service providers. To an end user, a p- vider offering a set of services or applications in the Cloud can manage these off- ings remotely. Despite these discrepancies, there is a general consensus that Cloud Computing includes technology that uses the Internet and collaborated servers to integrate data, applications, and computing resources. With proper Cloud access, such technology allows consumers and businesses to access their personal files on any computer without having to install special tools. Cloud Computing facilitates efficient operations and management of comp- ing technologies by federating storage, memory, processing, and bandwidth.

This is the first comprehensive book about the emerging technology of Network-Centric Service-Oriented Enterprise (NCSOE). It establishes a system-of-systems (SoS) view of information technologies. The book discusses the practical capability of a competitive ecosystem in terms of how to achieve decision superiority from exploiting information and situation awareness as a key enabler in multiple sectors of the economy.