Four Keys to an Off-the-Shelf Common Engineering Practice

Now more than ever before, consumers are demanding seamless anytime/anywhere converged communications. We’ve seen carriers and service providers competing for revenue and consumer. To produce an even greater blend of fixed and mobile services and deploy IMS, for example, carriers and service providers must build interoperable, flexible and scalable commercial off-the-shelf solutions. Likewise, a company-wide common engineering practice can consolidate the cycles needed to develop, evaluate, manufacture and deploy systems and accelerate time-to-market. When properly installed and governed, a COTS-based CEP discipline will produce the quickest return on capital investments.  But what are the keys to having a successful common engineering practice that supports COTS as an effective business practice?

There are four keys to deploying a successful COTS-based CEP discipline. 

Lifecycle Planning
A system that can systematically track engineering changes, end-of-life notices, as well as component availability and source controls are all essentials in the lifecycle game. Leveraging embedded products, however, is the key to a smooth plan.

Hardware Interoperability Analysis
Most standards continue to evolve to drive open standards into the communications markets. The standards, while well written, will most certainly leave gaps in the final specs. It’s critical to perform interoperability testing and analysis to avoid field reliability concerns.

Software to Hardware Integration
A holistically integrated platform, such that the OS, application, middleware and all supporting code, must be tightly integrated to provide the greatest return in integrity, longevity and performance of the solution.

Regulatory Compliance
COTS-based platforms often carry regulatory compliance at the building block level. This does not necessarily translate into system-level compliance. The key to offering a full regulatory compliant solution requires the engineering analysis and certification testing under the parameters.

Turn-key COTS-based hardware and software solutions will dominate the next decade’s landscape, so developing a robust common-engineering practice today is very important.  Having the right approach to a COTS-based CEP discipline is priceless. IT

Jeff Hudgins is vice president of Product Management at NEI, Inc. (www.NEI.com).

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