COTS integration: essential for network engineering

Our research aims at improving system level quality of a network by introducing a network engineering (NE) process framework. NE advocates a life cycle, process framework for network design, development, operations and maintenance, as a parallel to the software and systems engineering life cycle. NE was introduced with the spirit of improving the QoN, which is a related but orthogonal R&D area to the existing QoS R&D efforts. QoN is defined as the ability of an information technology (IT) system to meet user expectations by providing the intended functionality or desired information in a reliable, predictable and timely fashion. Our current research in NE has resulted in the development of the preliminary version of the Network Maturity Model (NMM) (http://nmm.eas.asu.edu). The NMM is a qualitative and predictive model to evaluate the QoN for network systems. NMM also allows for an NE process to evolve with predictable cost-benefit tradeoff