To some extent the transition to COTS products began with the congressional legislation of 1986 that required the Department o

Over the last several years the COTS products have drastically changed the landscape for systems integrators. No longer do integrators create a system and then support that same system without any major changes for longer periods of time. Rather, integrators must constantly evaluate new technologies and monitor their existing architectures to determine how cutting edge technologies affect the current system. The work associated with this paradigm shift does not end with the simple creation of tools and processes, but rather extends to customer management and changing the way the customer interacts with the Lifecycle management of their system. Additionally, the paradigm shift creates several effects that drastically affect training, maintenance, logistic support, and configuration management activities for the systems integrator as well as customer.