Commercial Off-the-shelf Software Research Articles

Development and Implementation of the DHAPP Military eHealth Information Network System.

As the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, the Global Fund, and the US President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief focus on reaching 90-90-90 goals, military health systems are scaling up to meet the data demands of these ambitious objectives. Since 2008, the US Department of Defense HIV/AIDS Prevention Program (DHAPP) has been working with military partners in 14 countries on implementation and adoption of a Military eHealth Information Network (MeHIN). Each country implementation plan followed a structured process using international eHealth standards. DHAPP worked with the private sector to develop a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) electronic medical record (EMR) for the collection of data, including patient demographic information, clinical notes for general medical care, HIV encounters, voluntary medical male circumcision, and tuberculosis screening information. The COTS software approach provided a zero-dollar software license and focused on sharing a single version of the EMR across countries, so that all countries could benefit from software enhancements and new features over time. DHAPP also worked with the public sector to modify open source disease surveillance tools and open access of HIV training materials. Important lessons highlight challenges to eHealth implementation, including a paucity of technology infrastructure, military leadership rotations, and the need for basic computer skills building. While not simple, eHealth systems can be built and maintained with requisite security, flexibility, and reporting capabilities that provide critical information to improve the health of individuals and organizations.

An evaluation and acceptance of COTS software for FPGA-based controllers in NPPS

FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) has received much attention from nuclear industry as an alternative platform of PLC (Programmable Logic Controller)-based digital I&C (Instrumentation & Control). Software aspect of FPGA development encompasses several commercial tools such as logic synthesis and P&R (Place & Route), which should be first dedicated in accordance with domestic standards based on EPRI NP-5652. Even if a state-of-the-art supplementary EPRI TR-1025243 makes an effort, the dedication of indirect COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) SW such as FPGA logic synthesis tools has still caused a dispute. This paper proposes an acceptance process and evaluation criteria, specific to COTS SW, not commercial-grade direct items. It specifically incorporates indirect COTS SW and also provides categorized evaluation criteria for acceptance. It provides an explicit linkage between acceptance methods (Verification and Validation techniques) and evaluation criteria, too. We tried to perform the evaluation and acceptance process upon a commercial FPGA logic synthesis tool being used to develop a new FPGA-based digital I&C in Korea, and could confirm its applicability.

Analyze Requirements for PAIS with Best Practice

Traditional requirements analysis is focused on capture functions of the system that are being built from scratch. As the size and complexity of process-aware information system continues to grow, the use of COTS (Commercial off-the-shelf) software packages is being viewed as a solution. Use of COTS packages accelerates the implementation process to some extent, however, it puts enterprises into a dilemma: whether to adapt asis business processes or to customize software packages. In order to help the enterprises get out of the dilemma, a methodology is proposed to automatically elicit software requirement using best practice as domain knowledge. The methodology involves three phases: business modeling, gap detecting and gap bridging. Firstly, VPML is employed to describe as-is business process, Secondly, semantics computing technology is employed to analyze the gap between enterprise needs and COTS software capacity. At last, Goal Reasoning Technology is employed to encourage enterprise users and software vendors take participate in decision making process together.

Trends in Commercial-Off-The-Shelf vs. Proprietary Applications

ABSTRACT This study examines factors valued by IS managers in deciding if COTS software is a viable alternative to proprietary software. The results indicate managers who anticipate increased usage of COTS packages in 5 years used the same top three factors in the formation of their decisions to adopt COTS as their colleagues who anticipated either zero change in COTS usage or an increased usage of proprietary software used in deciding not to adopt COTS software. Managers anticipating increased COTS usage had a statistically significant higher value for each of those items compared to managers not anticipating growth in COTS software. Keywords: Commercial-Off-The-Shelf, Proprietary, Application Software INTRODUCTION The average information technology (IT) investment reported by organizations participating in the Society for Information Management's 36th Anniversary IT Trends Study was 5.3% of their gross revenue (Kappelman, et al., 2016) and IT contributes up to 50% of total capital costs (Applegate et. al. 2009). IT is essential to survival for most businesses. In the United States (US), President Obama requested a decrease of 2.9 percent in spending for IT projects for fiscal year 2015 bringing total requested IT spending for the United States Government to $79 billion (Information Week, 2014). This savings of $2.4 billion (2.9 percent) attributed to consolidation of commodity IT products and services, reduction of duplication, and cutting waste. Between 2011 and 2014 the Federal Government IT spending increased from $79.4 billion to $81.4 billion. Global spending on IT is expected to have a compound annual growth rate of 3.3 percent per year from 2015-2020 with IT products and services growing from almost $2.4 trillion in 2015 to over $2.7 trillion in 2020 (IDC, 2016). This increase is likely to be driven by demand for new technologies such as cloud computing, software as a service (SaaS) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) packages among others Luftman et al. (2015). Businesses are becoming increasingly reliant upon information technology and are likely to continue to be so into the future. Driven by customer demands and desires for increased effectiveness and efficiency businesses are increasing usage of software solutions. The increased usage is fueling a growth in demand for IT applications and increasing the need for software both in the proprietary and commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) domains and across ERP and non-ERP use cases. As an example, customers increasingly expect to be able to utilize smart phones and other mobile devices to accomplish an increasing array of tasks that were not previously possible with access to a full computer. This increased demand for more useful and powerful applications permeates an industry to the point that it becomes a basic expectation and any business not keeping current in their technological offerings is at a competitive disadvantage. Cloud computing, IT resource price decline, decreased costs of storage, and the increased processing power available at an affordable price point allows many small and medium size companies to afford IT applications for their organizations when they previously would not have been able to do so (Srinivasan 2013). These factors and others lead to a trend of annual increases in IT investments worldwide. Increased maturity in business intelligence, mobile computing, web-enabled transactions, and other areas are being seen as applications whose usage is beneficial for an increasing percentage of organization. However, limited available of resources is projected to lead to an increased reliance on cloud computing and outsourcing/offshoring services. Companies using cloud computing and/or offshoring/outsourcing, will have a decreased need for employees with higher IT skills (Himmel and Grossman, 2014). These trends in aggregate are expected to lead to a growth in the need for end user computing (EUC), the development and use of information systems by people outside the IS department (McLean 1979), within the organizations (Agrawal, et al. …

Goal Programming Approach for Selection of COTS Components in Designing a Fault Tolerant Modular Software System under Consensus Recovery Block Scheme

The application of computer systems has now crossed many different fields. Systems are becoming more software intensive. The requirements of the customer for a more reliable software led to the fact that software reliability is now an important research area. One method to improve software reliability is by the application of redundancy. A careful use of redundancy may allow the system to tolerate faults generated during software design and coding thus improving software reliability. The fault tolerant software systems are usually developed by integrating COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) software components. This paper is designed to select optimal components for a fault tolerant modular software system so as to maximize the overall reliability of the system with simultaneously minimizing the overall cost. A chance constrained goal programming model has been designed after considering the parameters corresponding to reliability and cost of the components as random variable. The random variable in this case has been considered as value which has known mean and standard deviation. A chance constraint goal programming technique is used to solve the model. The issue of compatibility among different commercial off-the shelf alternatives is also considered in the paper. Numerical illustrations are provided to demonstrate the model.

A BEHAVIOR-PRESERVING TRANSLATION FROM FBD DESIGN TO C IMPLEMENTATION FOR REACTOR PROTECTION SYSTEM SOFTWARE

Software safety for nuclear reactor protection systems (RPSs) is the most important requirement for the obtainment of permission for operation and export from government authorities, which is why it should be managed with well-experienced software development processes. The RPS software is typically modeled with function block diagrams (FBDs) in the design phase, and then mechanically translated into C programs in the implementation phase, which is finally compiled into executable machine codes and loaded on RPS hardware - PLC (Programmable Logic Controller). Whereas C Compilers are fully-verified COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) software, translators from FBDs to C programs are provided by PLC vendors. Long-term experience, experiments and simulations have validated their correctness and function safety. This paper proposes a behavior-preserving translation from FBD design to C implementation for RPS software. It includes two sets of translation algorithms and rules as well as a prototype translator. We used an example of RPS software in a Korean nuclear power plant to demonstrate the correctness and effectiveness of the proposed translation.

Requirements Uncertainty in Contract Software Development Projects

Only a few studies have analyzed the indirect effect that different levels of requirements uncertainty have on the effects of established flexible development techniques. Whereas much of what we know relates to the development of commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS), in this empirical study, we investigate contract software development projects undertaken for a specific contractor / customer. We analyze how requirements uncertainty moderates the effects of (1) sequential development, (2) investment in architectural design, and (3) intensity of early feedback on the performance of contract software development projects. We confirm that requirements uncertainty negatively moderates the effects of sequential development and of investment in architectural design. For flexible development approaches, the value of investment in architectural design falls with increasing uncertainty. Early feedback throughout the development process is helpful at any level of requirements uncertainty, potentially dependent on the business relationship between the customer and the software project team.

Optimal Performance Model Investigation in Component-Based Software Engineering (CBSE)

Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies have emerged over the past decade. COTS technology gained significant popularity by developing the optimal, efficient, economically and quickly software system that mapping business requirement. As a consequence, the need for designing effective strategies for enabling large scale reuse, whilst overcoming the risks involved in the use of a particular technology, still remains. In this situation, the use of “COTS” technology introduces many problematic factors that still have not been fully solved; some of them are the lack of inclusive tools, efficient methods to manage and collect the required information for supporting COTS software selection. Keeping in view all these issues in this research report present an Optimal Performance Model (OPM) for gathering the information that is needed to define COTS market segments in a way that would make software components selection more effective and efficient. Mostly the information we collect possess huge diversity therefore suggest OPM’s that will certainly help to cover different aspects and fields of COTS software selection. This design model will base on several software quality standards. Commercial of the shelf software has gained considerable popularity as approach that quickly and economical creates software system that address business requirement. This research work will presents an approach for defining assessment principles for reusable software components.

Two-Layer Wrapping for COTS Software Integration: An Experience with Matlab

Although commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) product integration presents clear advantages in a variety of engineering fields, several problems can arise in part due to their heterogeneous nature. Little research addresses the integration of particular COTS to specific domains. A University of Vigo project for reusable software development in the engineering domain adopted this approach. The underlying hypothesis was that making COTS integration easier would facilitate the development of domain-specific applications. The solution consists of a two-layer wrapping approach. The first layer captures the COTS domain model, facilitating integration of general-purpose functionality. A second layer provides better integration of more domain-specific functionality. Several real software development projects have used the proposed solution, and the results yielded notable effort savings, showing the approach's utility in reducing COTS integration efforts.

Benefits of an Automated GLP Final Report Preparation Software Solution

The final product of analytical laboratories performing US FDA-regulated (or GLP) method validation and bioanalysis studies is the final report. Although there are commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software/instrument systems available to laboratory managers to automate and manage almost every aspect of the instrumental and sample-handling processes of GLP studies, there are few software systems available to fully manage the GLP final report preparation process. This lack of appropriate COTS tools results in the implementation of rather Byzantine and manual processes to cobble together all the information needed to generate a GLP final report. The manual nature of these processes results in the need for several iterative quality control and quality assurance events to ensure data accuracy and report formatting. The industry is in need of a COTS solution that gives laboratory managers and study directors the ability to manage as many portions as possible of the GLP final report writing process and the ability to generate a GLP final report with the click of a button. This article describes the COTS software features needed to give laboratory managers and study directors such a solution.

Enterprise-wide information system for construction: A document based approach

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have gained significant popularity in last decade. However, with the growing rate of implementation, we have also heard of growing number of implementation failures and expensive repairs. Construction sector is a unique sector because a big proportion of construction companies can be classified as Small and Medium sized Enterprise (SMEs). This paper evaluates the applicability of ERP to construction sector. It also evaluates a document based enterprise information system and compares it to ERP through a case study of a modular home manufacturer. Based on the analysis, the document based enterprise information system seemed to be smaller, cheaper and more modular in nature. Given that it was assembled using Commercial Off the Shelf Software (COTS), it will also require less training and IT expertise from the users, reducing the training budget significantly as well. Based on the data, the document based system seems like a viable alternative to the ERP for the construction sector.

COTS and Design Pattern Based High Fidelity Flight Simulator Prototype System

Flight simulator is among the most sophisticated software systems in existence. It is highly distributed, has rigorous timing requirements, and must be amenable to frequent updates to maintain high fidelity with the ever- changing vehicle and environment it is simulating. Current flight simulation framework and software developing pattern are complicated to use and time consuming. We have accomplished a flight simulator prototype system based on a new distributed real-time simulation framework and non-flight-certified Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) solutions and have proved its fidelity and coordination characters as a flight training device. The distributed real- time simulation framework uses mediator design pattern as an information broker among flight simulation models of a sub-system which minimizes model interdependencies, improves the extendibility for the simulator and makes the maintenance easier. Meanwhile, the simulation models and executable code in the simulator were generated through COTS software and run on a PC cluster by which the difficulties of programming tasks are descend. The simulation modeling process and virtual prototype of the motion system are also expatiated. The validation methods and contrasting simulation results are presented finally to show the feasible design to carry out flight simulation with high quality.

OPTIMAL COMPONENT SELECTION OF COTS BASED SOFTWARE SYSTEM UNDER CONSENSUS RECOVERY BLOCK SCHEME INCORPORATING EXECUTION TIME

Computer based systems have increased dramatically in scope, complexity, pervasiveness. Most industries are highly dependent on computers for their basic day to day functioning. Safe & reliable software operations are an essential requirement for many systems across different industries. The number of functions to be included in a software system is decided during the software development. Any software system must be constructed in such a way that execution can resume even after the occurrence of failure with minimal loss of data and time. Such software systems which can continue execution even in presence of faults are called fault tolerant software. When failure occurs one of the redundant software modules get executed and prevent system failure. The fault tolerant software systems are usually developed by integrating COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) software components. The motivation for using COTS components is that they will reduce overall system development costs and reduce development time. In this paper, reliability models for fault tolerant consensus recovery blocks are analyzed. In first optimization model, we formulate joint optimization problem in which reliability maximization of software system and execution time minimization for each function of software system are considered under budgetary constraint. In the second model the issue of compatibility among alternatives available for different modules, is discussed. Numerical illustrations are provided to demonstrate the developed models.

Should vendors be liable for security flaws in software?

Integrating security into applications is an obvious thing, especially since most software bugs are usually the result of small errors in the code or oversights in the requirements. However, very few people have publicly asked the question: should the vendors who create software containing security holes be held liable for their oversights? With the National Security Agency, along with the SANS Institute and MITRE, highlighting the urgent need for a solution with their list of the top 25 most dangerous programming errors, companies and vendors need to pay more attention. 1 Organisations need to start asking more questions about the security of commercial off the shelf software (COTS) and the custom applications that are developed specifically for them.

Editorial

Our first paper in this issue of the ISJ investigates the possibilities and constraints of ubiquitous computing technology on an organization, and explains these impacts using the value chain model and the value constellation model. As a form of newly emerging technology, ubiquitous computing has raised a new research direction for information systems (IS) researchers, and social scientists more generally, to explain organization forms and the business models enabled by ubiquitous computing. The study of Katrin Jonsson, Ulrika Westergren and Jonny Holmström (Jonsson et al., 2008) uses semi-structured interviews as the primary means of data collection, and open, axial and selective coding techniques are used to code the interview data. This relates to remote diagnostics systems in a manufacturing company that proved to be an early adopter of this technology. The value chain model is focused on the internal activities of the firm, while the value constellation model is focused on empowering customers to create value for themselves. The discussion provides valuable insights for this company as well as showing how the ubiquitous information environment can have an impact that stretches beyond single organizations. The topic is new, interesting and important, and the empirical study data provided in this paper is especially valuable. Whereas information technology (IT) innovation research has examined the organizational and technological factors that determine IT adoption and diffusion, including firm size and scope, technological competency and expected benefits, the paper of Nigel Melville and Ronald Ramirez (Melville & Ramirez, 2008) extends the literature by focusing on information requirements as a driver of IT innovation adoption and diffusion. In their study, two industries (wood products and beverage manufacturing) provide empirical background, and the paper focuses on how supply chain characteristics (process complexity, clock speed and supply chain complexity) determine information processing requirements. The authors show that these, in turn, influence the development of IT capabilities and the rate and scale of IT innovation adoption. The comparison across the two industries illustrates the usefulness of the developed model. The authors conclude that the model shows that information processing requirements are a major influence on whether companies choose to be early and deep adopters of new technology. Teresa Shaft, Leslie Albert and Jon Jasperson (Shaft et al., 2008) help us understand the complicated cognitive transition of IS developers as they change from a structured to an object-oriented development environment in order to take advantage of the ease of development and maintenance and support for software reuse claimed by object-oriented development. Four hypotheses are developed in the research, and these are tested through a longitudinal study of a team of eight software developers going through this transition at an international petroleum company engaged in the firm's pilot object-oriented development project. The researchers utilize a multi-method approach that incorporates in-person group interviews, email logs and responses to a survey instrument. This field-based study of an IS development project provides many insights. Interestingly, one conclusion is that knowledge of structured development is positively related to knowledge of object-oriented development. This contradicts the often-cited notion that structured development needs to be unlearned in order to learn object-oriented concepts. Our last paper, by Ernst Kesseler (Kesseler, 2008), explores the issue of how to deploy commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software in safety-critical domains. The deployment of COTS software should bring with it low costs and shorter time-to-market, but an organization within the safety-critical domain is targeted in this study as this domain is known for its rigid regulations and slow introduction of new technology. In his paper, the author argues for the technical feasibility of COTS software and its general relevance for safety-critical domains, yet in exploring the development and implementation of a COTS-based prototype in the civil air transport industry, the expected benefits did not occur; indeed, in comparison with custom-made software, the COTS-based software took both a longer time to develop and was more expensive in terms of resources. The author discusses management style and team communication to explain this result, at least in part.

Assessing COTS software in a certifiable safety‐critical domain

Abstract. Commercial off‐the‐shelf (COTS) software solutions have become commonplace in many domains, including the military, because they can provide standardized functionality with more responsiveness, a shorter time‐to‐market and at lower costs than custom‐made solutions. In one domain, however, that of certifiable safety‐critical applications, COTS software has not been adopted. One particular type of certifiable safety‐critical domain, the civil air transport industry, is under pressure to reduce cost and time‐to‐market while simultaneously increasing safety. Therefore, the use of COTS software, rather than exclusive reliance on custom‐made software, would appear to be a solution worthy of investigation. This study examines the certifiability of COTS software, its technical feasibility in this environment, and the ability to achieve the expected responsiveness, time‐to‐market and cost benefits. A detailed evaluation of COTS software and domain‐specific certification requirements is used to demonstrate that the certification of COTS‐based systems is possible. A prototype COTS‐based system (built upon a number of COTS components) is created to illustrate the technical feasibility of such a system in the civil air transport domain. Expected benefits from COTS solutions are evaluated both by examining process artefacts from the development of the COTS‐based system and by comparing this development process with the domain's traditional custom‐development process.

QoS modeling and analysis of component‐based software systems: a stochastic approach

AbstractThere is a growing demand for using commercial‐off‐the‐shelf (COTS) software components to facilitate the development of software systems. Among many research topics for component‐based software, quality‐of‐service (QoS) evaluation is yet to be given the importance it deserves. In this paper, we propose a novel analytical model to evaluate the QoS of component‐based software systems. We use the component execution graph (CEG) graph model to model the architecture at the process level and the interdependence among components. The CEG graph can explicitly capture sequential, parallel, selective and iterative compositions of components. For QoS estimation, each component in the CEG model is associated with execution rate, failure rate and cost per unit time. Three metrics of the QoS are considered and analytically calculated, namely make‐span, reliability and cost. Through a case study, we show that our model is capable of modeling real‐world COTS software systems effectively. Also, Monte‐Carlo simulation in the case study indicates that analytical results are consistent with simulation and all are covered by 95% confidence intervals. We also present a sensitivity analysis technique to identify QoS bottlenecks. This paper concludes with a comparison with related work. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Extracting Acyclic Dependency Models from Quality Standards for COTS Software Evaluation

Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software has become a crucial component of many of today’s mission- and safety-critical products. As these products have proliferated internationally, global demand for software safety and performance quality has increased. Unfortunately, the current state-of-the-art in software assessment technology has not matured to the point where well-established and widely accepted schemes for evaluating COTS software quality have been presented. Without insight into the source code, COTS software users depend on a subjective assessment of attributes described by performance metrics, behavioral descriptions, and/or historical product data. Published techniques that attempt to formalize the above approach are often less than successful due to ill-defined and subjective metrics, and the naive assumption of independence between attributes. Recently, software standards have been seen as a means of improving the evaluation process by providing an acknowledged criterion for software metric comparison. Given the stated issues, is it possible to develop a standards-based dependency model of well-defined attributes that does not depend on naive assumptions? The answer to this question is yes. This paper describes a process that can be used to extract acyclic dependency models, if they exist, from various software product quality standards. Application of the extraction process will be used to reveal the attribute dependency model of the international software standard ISO/IEC 9126-1. Not only can this process be used for COTS software evaluation, but it can also be used by standards making bodies to clarify the reasoning, justifications and causal implications they employ when developing standards.

Integrating COTS Software into Systems through Instrumentation and Reasoning

Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software tends to be cheap, reliable, and functionally powerful due to its large user base. It has thus become highly desirable to incorporate COTS software into software products (systems) as it can significantly reduce development cost and effort, while maintaining overall software product quality and increasing product acceptance. However, incorporating COTS software into software products introduces new complexities that developers are currently ill equipped to handle. Most significantly, while COTS software frequently contains programmatic interfaces that allow other software components to obtain services from them on a direct call basis, they usually lack the ability to initiate interactions with other components. This often leads to problems of state and/or data inconsistency. This paper presents a framework for integrating COTS software as proactive components within a software system that maintain the consistency of the state and data they share with other components. The framework utilizes a combination of low-level instrumentation and high-level reasoning to expose the relevant internal activities within a COTS component required to initiate the communication needed to maintain consistency with the other components with which it shares state and data. We will illustrate these capabilities through the integration of IBM's Rational Rose into a design suite and demonstrate how our framework solves the complex data synchronization problems that arise from this integration.

My view: Automation vendors seek pastures new

Industrial automation is becoming an increasingly commoditised business. With the ever more widespread adoption of COTS (commercial off the shelf) hardware, software and communications technologies - Windows, Intel, and Ethernet to name but three - it's becoming harder than ever for automation vendors to differentiate themselves from their competitors, to identify areas where they can seek genuine competitive advantage and, most important, to make serious money. That's not to deny that opportunities still exist to innovate in the mainstream automation business, but the fact still remains that advances in technology tend to offer only marginal improvements in performance, both over a particular vendor's previous generation of equipment and over the current offerings of its competitors. Time was when factory and process automation vendors sold instruments and control systems. They still do, but an increasing proportion of their revenues are coming from outside their traditional areas of interest.