An open system for multiple discrete, geographically disperse simulation
engines to communicate with each other across a distributed electronic
network, such as the Internet, comprises a portal accessible to the
simulation engines over the network. Local portions of the simulation may
be run separately by each simulation engine, and the output data files
are stored on and managed by the portal. A co-simulating engine may
request an output data file stored by the portal and use that data as
input for its downstream portion of the simulation. In this fashion,
multiple geographically disperse simulation engines can test bench their
designs in an open, network centric simulation environment.