Analysis Tools for Managing Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Obsolescence

Product life cycles, windows available for engineering design, and warfighter platform deployment are critical program elements which dramatically affect the life cycle costs and total ownership cost of DoD systems employing elements of COTS Information Technology (IT). Integrating these elements to make an obsolescence-based program sustainment decision, in a cost-effective decision support construct, is absolutely critical to supporting deployed systems, based on Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) technologies, at an affordable funding level. Additionally, cyber security is a key driver in the challenge of managing COTS obsolescence due to the threat that unsupported hardware and software poses to Navy networks. The overall Innovative Defense Technologies (IDT) proposed solution is to provide a highly scalable and adaptable solution, suitable for use across an enterprise, which organizes the highly complex and disparate data sources associated with COTS obsolescence into a decision-making construct.