Utilizing COTS For Business

In a demanding business market, it is particularly difficult to cope especially with technological innovations involved. The good news is that non technical businesses have a way of being at par with the completion and compete equally by employing solutions found in COTS. Also knows as commercial of-the-shelf software components, this packaged solutions are more accessible to businesses without the resources to employ custom built components to build their very own service oriented architecture.

COTS promise of convenience for end users. There are many reasons why the use of COTS should be encouraged. But the most obvious reason is convenience of use. System architects will no longer have to waste valuable time in building and designing custom components as COTS offer readily available software components. These commercial of-the-shelf software components are also designed to be user friendly. Whether an individual is technical or a non technical person, he will still be able to find ease of use.

The commercial software components are especially designed to cater to specific business demands. Their functionality is undisputable and they do provide solutions. On the other hand, there may be some details that it may miss out on. These are some of the things that only custom built components will be able to fulfill. In this case, the requirements along with the budget should be carefully weighed.

COTS cost effectiveness in commercial. Commercial of-the-shelf software components or COTS are obviously more reasonable in terms of cost. A business will be able to find its functionality worth the purchase. This, plus the fact that it is quite easy and fairly simple to employ makes it a practical investment. Small businesses who may not have enough resources to put in building sophisticated system architecture will find COTS a suitable alternative. The solution it offers are proven and tested by the vendors themselves. And it is definitely worth trying considering the budget factor.

Overall solution and functionality. Commercial of-the-shelf software components are built to fulfill specific requirements as dictated by the business industry. It is mostly used to facilitate transactions involving the legal and medical fields. It particularly caters to managing tasks that include but not limited to the following functions: billing, chemical analysis operations and statistical analysis among other functionality. It is carefully devised to be a stand-alone solution that can be integrated to a company’s existing system software deployment.

Although there are some who argue that the use of commercial of-the-shelf software components is particularly challenging when it comes to the process of system integration as they argue it does not prove to be as versatile as promised. Its functionality is limited, as they would argue making it difficult to maintain and support. It is equally difficult to build it with an existing system framework and that reduces its functionality. Integration of commercial software components may have its limits and restrictions.

In this case, it is important to evaluate and carefully assess all the factors involved in the investment. COTS do offer some advantages but it may also have its own downsides.

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