New Year, New Way to Buy a System

31 DECEMBER 2008. As 2009 ushers in a new US administration with a focus on technology and innovation and a mandate to spend tax dollars more wisely and effectively, those of us in the command and control (C2) business can see the writing on the wall. The government acquisition community has been struggling unsuccessfully for years to get the right bang for its buck (http://spectrum.ieee.org/weapons). At this point, there is really nowhere to go but up, and we’ll recommend several proven approaches to successful technology acquisition in this and future blogs.

The acquisition philosophy that provides the greatest immediate results is to purchase customized “commercial-off-the-shelf” (COTS) systems instead of fully customized systems (http://www.braxtontech.com/modules/whitepapers/item.php?itemid=8).

What is custom COTS exactly? Custom COTS is very like the Lego® construction system (http://www.lego.com/en-US/default.aspx): You have multiple reliable, high-functioning components that you reuse, along with a few specialized parts, to create a farm, castle, fire truck, or galactic fighter.

The custom COTS components used in command and control systems, for example, consist of proven integrated software applications, shared libraries, and ubiquitous hardware. To these you add a few specialized software parts, which we call “plug-ins”, to control each specific spacecraft, missile type, launch vehicle, aircraft family, satellite constellation, or ground network.
Acquisition of custom COTS reduces cost, schedule and performance risk in many ways:

Cost Risk Reduced:
Purchasing custom COTS solutions reduces your financial risk since you know and can lock in purchase and maintenance prices for the majority of the system components you need. The best value custom COTS solutions have the lowest percentage of customized components and the highest percentage of the capabilities you need right out of the box. Ask for a demo to identify your actual cost exposure.

Schedule Risk Reduced:
Implementing a custom COTS system reduces your schedule risk because the majority of the system is available immediately and the smaller size of the customized components makes the schedule estimates much more accurate. In addition, the immediate availability of the majority of the system allows for rapid prototyping, another huge schedule risk reducer. I’ll talk more about the extensive benefits of rapid prototyping in a future blog. (http://www.rapidprototyping.net/)

Performance Risk Reduced:
Custom COTS performance risk is minimized because the infrastructure and the lion’s share of the functionality have been proven in both critical 24x7 use and repeated testing of each custom COTS system that has been implemented before yours using the same COTS product suite. Ask your vendor what vehicles and constellations their systems are commanding and check those references to assess performance confidence.

2009 is the Year of the Ox (http://www.squidoo.com/2009YearOfTheOx). For the hardworking, risk-averse Ox, there could be no more reliable system solution than a custom COTS one. Have a great New Year!