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.
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.
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.
However, software industry observers such as Gartner and the SANS Institute indicate that supply chain disruption poses a major threat.
Gartner predicts that "enterprise IT supply chains will be targeted and compromised, forcing changes in the structure of the IT marketplace and how IT will be managed moving forward".
[7] In this industry, faults in software components could become system failures in the device itself if the steps are not taken to ensure fair and safe standards are complied with.
[11] In general, COTS product obsolescence can require customized support or development of a replacement system.
Hence, some partnerships have led to complaints of favoritism, to avoiding competitive procurement practices, and to claims of the use of sole-source agreements where not actually needed.
This moves more of the avionic design from fixed circuits to software that can be applied to future generations of hardware.