Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Application

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A Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Application is a software product that is ready-made and available for sale to the general public, designed to be implemented easily into existing systems without the need for customization.

References

2024c

  • Perplexity
    • Here are some common examples of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) applications:
      1. Productivity suites like Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint), Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Slides), LibreOffice, etc.[3][5]
      2. Email clients like Microsoft Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, etc.[1][5]
      3. Media players like VLC Media Player, Windows Media Player, etc.[1]
      4. Image/video editing software like Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Final Cut Pro, etc.[1][3]
      5. Web browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, etc.[3]
      6. Operating systems like Microsoft Windows, macOS, Linux distributions, etc.[3][5]
      7. Accounting software like QuickBooks, Xero, FreshBooks, etc.[3]
      8. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software like Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho CRM, etc.[3]
      9. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems like SAP, Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics, etc.[3]
      10. Antivirus and security software like Norton, McAfee, Kaspersky, etc.[3][5]
    • The key characteristic of COTS applications is that they are pre-built, commercially available software products designed to serve a wide range of users and organizations with standard features and functionalities, rather than being custom-built for a specific entity.[3][4][5]
    • Citations:
[1] https://wazobia.tech/blog/development/what-is-off-the-shelf-software-with-examples
[2] https://www.fingent.com/blog/off-shelf-vs-custom-software-making-right-choice-business/
[3] https://softwareconnect.com/learn/what-is-off-shelf-software/
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_off-the-shelf
[5] https://www.techtarget.com/searchdatacenter/definition/COTS-MOTS-GOTS-and-NOTS

2024b

  • (Wikipedia, 2024) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_off-the-shelf Retrieved:2024-4-28.
    • Commercial-Off-The-Shelf or commercially available off-the-shelf (COTS) products are packaged or canned (ready-made) hardware or software, which are adapted aftermarket to the needs of the purchasing organization, rather than the commissioning of custom-made, or bespoke, solutions. A related term, Mil-COTS, refers to COTS products for use by the U.S. military.

      In the context of the U.S. government, the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) has defined "COTS" as a formal term for commercial items, including services, available in the commercial marketplace that can be bought and used under government contract. For example, Microsoft is a COTS software provider. Goods and construction materials may qualify as COTS but bulk cargo does not. Services associated with the commercial items may also qualify as COTS, including installation services, training services, and cloud services. COTS purchases are alternatives to custom software or one-off developments – government-funded developments or otherwise. Although COTS products can be used out of the box, in practice the COTS product must be configured to achieve the needs of the business and integrated to existing organizational systems. Extending the functionality of COTS products via custom development is also an option, however this decision should be carefully considered due to the long term support and maintenance implications. Such customized functionality is not supported by the COTS vendor, so brings its own sets of issues when upgrading the COTS product. The use of COTS has been mandated across many government and business programs, as such products may offer significant savings in procurement, development, and maintenance. Motivations for using COTS components include hopes for reduction system whole of life costs.

      In the 1990s, many regarded COTS as extremely effective in reducing the time and cost of software development.COTS software came with many not-so-obvious tradeoffs – a reduction in initial cost and development time over an increase in software component-integration work, dependency on the vendor, security issues and incompatibilities from future changes. [1]

  1. ↑ McKinney, Dorothy "Impact of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Software and Technology on Systems Engineering" , Presentation to INCOSE Chapters, August 2001, accessed January 28, 2009

2024a

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