Publisher’s
Notebook Change and How to Capitalize on It
I
’m trying to set the discussion stage for COTS Journal’s annual Analysts Breakfast at this November’s MILCOM 2011 in Baltimore, and keep it from focusing on the Mil budget. Over the last few months, finding people willing to talk about our market has been like pulling teeth. Basing a company’s direction on vague government concepts is difficult, so talking about market direction is all but impossible. Companies also can’t wait. They have to develop a plan and set tasks with the limited visibility available. However, the last thing companies want to do is talk to people like me and state that so far they haven’t figured it out—or something less intelligent like “none of this will affect us.” Eventually someone in government has to determine exactly what they want the military to be or look like for the next ten years. Until that happens we can be intelligent enough to formulate some basic concepts and then try to role-play our industry into those concepts. Let’s work with these three basics: First, there will be less money and how it’s spent will be closely monitored and controlled. Second, a greater use of commercially available technology and products is inevitable. And third, all products will be fielded much quicker than ever before. Each of these three basic premises has advantages and obstacles for our industry. Understandably, primes will want to keep as much business as possible in-house, focusing on where they have strengths, expertise and exclusivity. This opens opportunities for electronics suppliers to provide elements for deliverable systems to primes. They will then integrate these elements—subsystems, boards, modules and so on—with other subsystems for delivery of an entire system to the end user platform. With all that in mind, there are individual issues to determine: like the level of cooperation to invest to partner with primes and other subsystem providers, and deciding how many platforms warrant these types of efforts. Primes are making their own determination of how to best serve the military and their shareholders. Expect to see them have less interest in buying complete subsystems and instead return to buying boards or pre-integrated subsystems. There will also be a return to a demand for solutions that are not over qualified beyond the military’s immediate need—in other words, fewer unrequired bells and whistles included to serve potential future needs. Preintegrated systems will still see growth but the growth in their sophistication will be less not more. There will also be an urgency on the part of primes to get working demos put together as quickly as possible so they can show their customers—the military—a high Technology Readiness Level (TRL) solution. They’ll need the right mix of boards and pre-integration expertise to help them do that. [ 6 ] COTS Journal October 2011
The current and future sophistication and density of silicon has also complicated our industry’s decision making process. On one had there’s the ongoing problem that a majority of the silicon only has an 18-month life cycle. Meanwhile its complexity limits the differentiation that can be performed between module suppliers. Once you make the decision as to whether you use AMD, Intel, Freescale or another processor family, you need to determine how to position your product for market success. Do you just offer a basic product with broad market application potential—perhaps only having price and company reputation as differentiators? Or choose one of two other alternatives. One option is to design a series of products that support one or two exotic interfaces or controls. Another is to design one or two complex products with multiple exotic interfaces and controls. The limited options approach almost mandates designing a product for each potential quote. That’s good if you can do it quickly and you can afford the efforts. The multiple options strategy meanwhile increases a product’s potential application spectrum but elevates the cost of the product—even if the design philosophy allows for component depopulation. Many military deliverable program concepts will have to be smaller in scope and part of a “road map” rather than an “end all” concept that will work for decades. FCS has already experienced this fate. Will JTRS follow? JTRS resolves an absolutely essential need but has been in development for decades and is now just starting to get fielded. The question is how far will JTRS continue to be incorporated and for how long? Is it easier and cheaper to find a way to militarize and secure a smartphone and a tablet concept for the military? This only highlights the evolution of the COTS trend. Decades ago we saw COTS as a necessity to force the use of high-performance commercially available silicon. Today we need to elevate our thought process for COTS even higher to include concepts. Whether we’re willing to accept it or not, our industry uses the concepts developed for gaming in training, simulation, unmanned vehicles and dozens more military applications. All the concepts that are changing faster than we can incorporate them in our personal lives have to be considered for modification and use in the military. This means more opportunities for companies that know the military market and adapt technology. Pete Yeatman, Publisher COTS Journal