The Department of Defense is challenged to address multiple transformation priorities simultaneously. These include meeting the needs of the warfighter by fielding the best new equipment possible to the current force; life cycle management of these rapidly fielded systems and equipment; upgrading and modernizing existing equipment; and incorporating new technologies.  

 Addressing these demands depends on a set of complex interrelationships; affordability; cost and schedule improvements; risk reduction; planned, current and realizable performance; and life cycle management including upgrades and modernization.

 CommerceBasix develops Courses of Action (COA) that are based on a set of standardized quantitative and qualitative metrics. These COA’s are resource informed, outcome oriented and integrated.  Once the minimum essential capabilities are established, the analysis takes into account technology development, feasibility, maturity, time frames, the number of vendors who can supply the technology, and an assessment of those vendors. Life cycle management issues, which can also impact cost and availability, are part of the analysis. Other key elements included are: the impact of ownership and control of Intellectual Property (IP), planned technology development, migration and support time frames.  These are overlaid with the movements of the business markets on these vendors, which can impact the business segment, viability, technology development, and the market focus of the supplier.

Why is the inclusion of the business markets critical to any analysis of COA’s?  Because in today’s global market, it directly impacts the number of vendors from which the technology can be supplied, from where the technology can be sourced, and if the technology will be supported over the lifetime of the system. Companies will be bought and sold, corporate divisions will be consolidated or sold; companies will be taken private; companies will expand, contract or redirect their market focus, mergers and acquisitions and/or joint ventures can occur which include foreign ownership; investors/shareholders will change the development focus or the company’s technology strategy, and in some cases, although their technology is promising it might not have a big enough market and therefore the company may no longer be financially viable.

All these multiple factors are integrated into the analysis and COA’s that CommerceBasix develops. The result provides a traceable and fact based data set to determine and value the alternatives.