Evolution of the use and risks of commercial software components

The need to cut software costs has increased the use of commercial software components in recent years. The COTS software is received from the distributor and is used without internal modification by an integrator. The users of commercial software and COTS components cannot fully control the evolution and maintenance of the software. This paper presents an evaluation of commercial software component use and its significance in software architecture and the risks encountered in three projects in the years 1996-2001. This research proved that although the significance of commercial software components in software architectures has increased, there still exist many functional and quality risks. The quality of the commercial software component documentation and vendor support is immature, and delivery of the components via the Internet has increased the security risks.