HQ Electronic Systems Center, Engineering and Program Management Directorate (ESC/ENS), 5 Eglin St., Hanscom AFB, MA 01731-2116

58 -- COMMAND AND CONTROL PRODUCT LINE PRODUCT LIST POC CCPL Product Line Representative, 1-800-495-3877. As part of the overall plan for acquisition reform, the Electronic Systems Center (ESC), will be promoting a product line approach to systems acquisition and intends to establish suitability of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) and government off-the-shelf (GOTS) software products for use in product lines. The purpose of this approach is to reduce the development time and costs associated with command and control (C2) acquisitions through the development of flexible C2 architectures populated with reusable software components. Software components suitable for command center application will initially be sought. The Portable, Reusable, Integrated Software Modules (PRISM) and Comprehensive Approach to Reusable Defense Software (CARDS) programs have laid the groundwork for implementing the Product Line Product List (PLPL) concept for the Command Center domain. PRISM has developed a command center software infrastructure for establishing suitability of COTS software products and CARDS maintains a repository of information on reusing the products and experience gained in building Command Centers. The PLPL will be an organized list of COTS products suitable for use in ESC Product Line applications, along with the information relating to their suitability against ESC Product Line Architectures. The PLPL will be stored in an Oracle database and will eventually be accessible through the internet through an HTML interface, and will be available in catalog form. The PLPL will be managed by an independent, non-profit organization using predefined criteria for establishing suitability of software products. The non-profit organization is expected to ultimately be self-sustaining, supporting itself through fees and support services related to product suitability establishment and distribution. The non-profit organization will not be a federal government organization. It will be a center operated under federal sponsorship by a private entity. Once the suitability criteria is established, additional CBD announcements will solicit comments from vendors to the criteria. After vendor comments are addressed and the criteria is finalized, other CBD announcements will solicit products from vendors for suitability testing against the criteria. For more information on the Product Line approach or Product Line Product List, contact a representative at 1-800-495-3877. (0349)

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