With 19 member nations and 25 partner nations, one of NATO's biggest operational problems is its ability to communicate effectively during multi-national operations such as Kosovo. Each nation has different communications equipment that may or may not be compatible with equipment from other nations. Understanding how forces from different nations can best communicate requires detailed knowledge of what equipment different forces have, and the characteristics of that equipment (e.g. protocols, standards, interfaces, and frequencies).

RTI developed the JOTID system to help solve this problem by doing two things: storing all information relevant to communications interoperability in a common database, and providing sophisticated management and assessment tools to allow users to make both strategic and tactical decisions. The primary JOTID component is a Java application that provides a number of tools that allow users to perform different types of automated interoperability assessments, and then drill down into the results to get more detailed information. By automating the interoperability assessment process, the JOTID tool transforms raw data into useful knowledge that allows users to make better decisions in less time.

Although the initial JOTID system was developed on a tight schedule and limited budget, RTI was able to use its experience in object oriented and distributed systems design to ensure that JOTID could be easily migrated to a more distributed, multi-tier application in the future. This effort is currently paying off, as NATO and RTI are in the process of extending the JOTID system to provide web-based interfaces and XML based tools that allow users to more easily share data. Because of the extra forethought used in developing the system architecture, RTI is able to completely reuse the existing JOTID business logic and data access code in the development of the new tools.