Software Assurance FY2425

Description

Summary of work The software product is a set of middleware services, interfaces, standards and architectures for the deployment and management of software and gateware (i.e. FPGA bitstreams) applications, allowing them to be executed on a variety of hardware. It also provides the ability to orchestrate multiple applications together (potentially on different platforms) as a coherent 'application bundle'. The software product provides: • Interfaces describing how users interact with the systems, • Standards for security, hardware descriptions, data exchange and configuration, • Architectures describing how The software product can be implemented. The standard describes the component parts of the software product, how those parts interface and the mechanism by which external systems would use or control a software product instance. The software product standard covers the following aspects: 1. Application Packaging 2. System Security and User Authorisation 3. Hardware Interfacing and Abstraction 4. Internal Messaging 5. External Control 6. Resource Provisioning 7. Fault Recovery Dstl has also developed an implementation of the software product standard which is composed of the following services: • Gatekeeper - is the first software to start; its role is to provide oversight of the software product applications and provide feedback in the event of non-recoverable errors. • Core Services - a number of services that provide the core functionality of the software product. These include a message broker, logging, data store, configuration store, session management, APIs and management UI. • Application Management - services that support the installation, running and stopping of an application bundle on the system. Applications may run natively on the system or in containers. The implementation also includes a documented developer application programming interface (API) with examples for use with C/C++, Python 3.4+ and Rust. The software product Dstl has developed the software product middleware up to Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6 and is now working to raise it to TRL 8 / 9. Part of this process is to have the code base, engineering artefacts and development processes independently reviewed to assess the quality of the work and to identify any potential improvements needed before the software is deployed Where the supplied staff will work No specific location (for example they can work remotely) Why the work is being done Specified in the summary The business problem Specified in summary The people who will use the product or service User type: DSTL Definition: N/A Which phase the project is in Live Existing team Project: Damian Dix/Thomas Hardman. Commercial: Harpal Birk. Technical lead: Martin Pittuck-Schols. Address where the work will be done N/A Working arrangements Supplier to work remotely Security and vetting requirements Security Check (SC) More information about the Security requirements: SC is preferred but not essential. Latest start date 31 July 2024 Expected contract length Contract length: 0 years 4 months 0 days Budget Indicative maximum: £600000 Indicative minimum: £400000 Contracted out service or supply of resource? Supply of resource: the off-payroll rules may apply