SoCoEMo-COTS: A Software Economic Model for Commercial Off-the-shelf (COTS) Based Software Development

With component-based reuse, software development is achieved through the planned integration of pre-existing software components. Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) Based Development (CBD) is one of the systematic reuse approaches promising gains in cost, operational quality, functionality, time to market and maintenance overheads. This is an increasingly popular paradigm for software development, but one that is not without risks and associated costs. In fact, an increasing number and variety of COTS components become available but it is important to understand the costs, benefits, and risks entailed in using these components. This paper presents an economic model for any organization willing to adopt a CBD approach for its systems development. Such model which quantifies the predicted benefits and return on investment of CBD can help managers make the good decision to adopt or not such a reuse approach. We denote our model SoCoEMo-COTS for “Software Cost Estimation Model for COTS”.