BOSTON, 14 May 2010. The defense industry needs to develop a comprehensive and standardized solution to manage the problem of rapid obsolescence of COTS components in aerospace and defense applications, warn market researchers at Strategy Analytics in Boston.
Increasing use of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) has gone hand-in-hand with the growing problem of COTS obsolescence, and industry standards on COTS obsolescence are necessary, even though several methods for COTS obsolescence management have found favor in military procurement in mitigating specific aspects of COTS obsolescence, analysts say.
In addition, the electronics industry must redefine the characteristics of systems that rely on COTS components so that total cost of ownership (TCO) can be evaluated effectively and assessed, Strategy Analytics experts say. Analysts outlined their position in a report entitled “Cost Implications of COTS Obsolescence Management Trends.”
“Even as the defense industry faces multiple challenges in terms of environmental legislation, there is a growing requirement to incorporate countermeasures capabilities in COTS-based systems,” says Strategy Analytics analysts Asif Anwar. “This introduces another catalyst for COTS obsolescence that needs to be managed.”
Creating standards to manage COTS obsolescence may be expensive, "with growing pressure on defense budgets, Strategy Analytics believes that it is vital that standards for obsolescence management be established, so as to allow the economic implications of those specifications to be properly evaluated on a TCO basis,” Anwar says.
For more information contact Strategy Analytics online at www.strategyanalytics.com.
