European COTS User Working Group: Analysis of the Common Problems and Current Practices of the European COTS Users

Abstract

The use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software is in creasingly becoming a necessity for many European organisations. But this necessity introduces new problems and changes for all levels of the organisations both from the business point of view and the technical point of view. Funded by the Information Society Technologies Programme of the European Commission, the European COTS User Working Group (ECUA) was born to address common problems faced by European COTS users, achieve consensus on their solutions and produce a favourable impact in the overall COTS market. This paper is written based on the discussions of the Special Interest Group Sessions on the COTS Issues From the Business and the Information Technology (IT) Perspectives at the First ECUA Workshop, held at the European Software Institute, Zamudio, Spain on 31 May—1 June 2001 in which over forty participants from all over Europe (and one from Canada) participated.

We wish to thank all the participants of the first European COTS User Working Group Workshop who shared their actual CBS development experiences with us during the discussions. This document could not be have been written without their contribution.