Envisions of future network enabled socio-technical systems are in focus of several international ongoing efforts by industry and academia. Different interest groups, e.g., the agent and the Grid computing communities, have to that end put forward several roadmaps. However, those roadmaps by and large presuppose a key role to be played by their favorite technologies. We propose another complementary approach with a focus on the requirements on the goal system (Network Enabled Capabilities) and a generic configurable framework to support design, implementation, monitoring, and maintenance of future dependable and secure sociotechnical systems. Our methodological approach is grounded on IEEE standards on software intensive systems and on own experiences in development of such systems. We propose the use of agent technologies foremost in requirement engineering and high-level design whence the implementation platform is in our cases preferably based on Service Oriented Architectures as in Grid computing.