Pros and cons of using COTS products

In recent years, there has been a general trend in the automated test industry to migrate to commercial off the shelf (COTS) software and hardware. This has created a lot of controversy. The drive to incorporate COTS software and hardware is often based on incomplete or inaccurate information. Using COTS products does offer many advantages; however there are also disadvantages, many of which are not readily apparent. For instance, many experienced engineers are reluctant to move to COTS, if for no other reason than a general resistance to change. Many "seasoned" engineers have the "not invented here" mentality that generates a general distrust for COTS products in general. Although it is generally a good idea not to accept something without verifying its capabilities, it is also not a good idea to reject something on general principle. The author believes that if COTS products are incorporated giving proper regard to the issues discussed in this paper, the pros are emphasized and the cons minimized. For example, recently our team convinced one of its customers, (via demonstrations) to make a significant modification to their TPS approach (from an in house solution to a COTS-based solution). The team demonstrated that by exploiting a COTS product's built-in capabilities, the customer's functional interface layer and database (a large amount of C++ code, a year in the making) was not required. Not only did this reduce the amount of code required to be under CM control, but more importantly, greatly simplified the development and debug environment for the test developer. This paper discusses the advantages and disadvantages (pros and cons) of using COTS software and hardware for some of the major areas of interest related to automated test solutions.