Commercial Off the Shelf Software (COTS)

Many commercial and government organizations have discovered that purchasing and configuring Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) software solutions saves them time and money as they work to modernize their enterprise software environments.

Within the government health and human services environment, COTS solutions are being encouraged by modernization funders such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

For example, Medicaid Management Information System (MMIS) replacement projects are encouraged by CMS to employ COTS, as well as Software as a Service (cloud-based) solutions, as a method for reducing both risks to the project and overall costs.

Software as a Service (SaaS) involves the implementation of a cloud-hosted COTS solution. Cloud hosting eliminates the need for on-premises technical and security infrastructure, which is outsourced to the SaaS solution vendor.

Charles Goolsby works with you to define COTS and SaaS requirements that are appropriate for your organization's needs.

Here are some of the key aspects of COTS/SaaS analysis:

• The business vision for the solution (business objectives)
• Core business features of the existing COTS/SaaS solution
• Gap analysis (the solution's alignment to the business need)
• Data conversion and cleansing
• Interface requirements (to internal and external systems)
• Technical requirements for the COTS/Solution solution
• Technical requirements of the customer's existing environment

COTS requirements data is commonly reported by the use of requirements traceability matrices (RTMs).

Read the section on requirements traceability for more information. 

Charles has extensive experience in defining appropriate COTS and SaaS requirements for commercial and public healthcare systems.