Ultra-Large-Scale Systems: The Software Challenge of the Future, a report produced by Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute, just might be a watershed blueprint for the next generation of top-level software design. Although it's written with a distinct slant toward the US military's future requirements, its description of how the fundamental principles of software design will change in a global economy - defined by ubiquitous computing - are finding wide appeal. © 2008 IEEE.