The approaches to optimization of total cost of ownership in the life cycle of software of information systems for various purposes: critical systems , primarily for public use, as well as the so-called Software - Intensive Systems, primarily weapons systems (aviation, space, guided weapons). The first group of systems in the Russian literature is called the processes and Life Cycle Support System of M ission-Critical System, the second in American sources is called Sustainability - processes. The goals and differences of both approaches are analyzed. Recommendations on the use and development of the achieved results are formulated.
1.1 Systems for various purposes differ in complexity and cost depending on the required functionality, quality requirements, the degree of severity of real-time regulations, the degree of change in the initial requirements during the development of the system (software), the intensity of changes in requirements and software during system maintenance. A significant role is played by the number of copies of the system, that is, the number of copies simultaneously in operation, and requiring changes to each instance. On the other hand, the role of centralized information p rocessing systems, including data processing using cloud technologies, is increasing. This leads to the need to improve the processes and technologies of operation and maintenance of bo t h unique software and COTS – applications included in the systems.
Since 2003-2009, a common approach to solving these problems is the approach to reducing (optimizing) the total cost of ownership throughout the life cycle of systems – from the formation and engineering requirements to the creation, implementation and utilization of automated technologies of changes at all stages of the software and system life cycle. Moreover, we are talking not only about the developers of systems and their software, but also stakeholders: customers, specialists from organizations owners of systems and organizations – system operators and organizations - maintainers.
This direction simultaneously developed in various organizations of our country, engaged in the development of systems of centralized processing of information mainly for public purposes. A special feature of the developing technologies and tools was the need to organize the development, maintenance and development of systems and their software in parallel with their operation.
In parallel, the SEI Institute in the USA developed an initiative in the same direction in relation to software of another type of systems – Software – Intensive Systems. This type includes control systems for aircraft (helicopters, airplanes, etc.) and ot her defense systems. Systems of this type are characterized by the complexity of the software and a fairly high cost, complexity and duration of changes. In addition, these are replicated objects. As a result – there is a high frequency of changes in requirements, the emergence of a large number of versions of configuration management objects (CMOS) and the need to make every change to all the same type instances of systems (copies of software), including taking into account the peculiarities of the production of CMOS. Accordingly, it is necessary to test versions of the CMOS, including in interaction with other CMOS that are part of the system. 1.2
The life cycle (LC) of system of interest and it software is the period from the
emergence of the concept of creating a system to its removal from service. For the
considered types of systems, the duration of the LC is about 15-20 years or more. The cost
of the actual development of application software and its integration into the system
in the LC is estimated at about 20% of the total cost. The remaining part is the cost of
operation, maintenance and development of the software. Such costs cannot be
uncontrolled and unregulated. In addition, relations between investors, owners ,
operators, specialists in support and development should be built on the scale of the opera t
ed system, regulations should be established, and the infrastructure for making,
testing changes, technical maintenance of the system and its elements should be b uilt.
The need to create such a system for life cycle support is prescribed by the
international standard ISO/IEC/IEEE 15288 [
Systematic work is needed to maintain the consistency of the system's functional characteristics and purpose indicators in a state of usability, and thus to maintain the systemas an asset.
Of course, for systems of sufficiently high complexity and multiplicity, the development and commissioning of processes and procedures of such a level, the creation of such an infrastructure to maintain a certain level of quality of functioning, the speed of changes and guarantee their quality is not a cheap project. However, the creation of an enabling system essentially has no alternative, because it is an organizational and technical mechanism to combat the main potential losses that need to be reduced or minimized: the risks that are implemented at the stages of operation and maintenance of systems. The cost of implementing the risk at these stages can be comparable to the cost of creating the asset, that is, to the cost of developing the system. Or surpass her. Preservation of the asset requires additional organizational and technical resources: personnel, equipment, tools, regulatory and methodological support of the systemin the LC.
In our opinion, the main directions of reducing the total cost of ownership (TCO) are:
• improvement of the processes of financing projects for the creation of automated systems, taking into account the issues of ensuring their life cycle
• inclusion in the structure of the created systems of the necessary solutions to ensure the life cycle as mandatory subsystems, technological equipment, providing increased productivity and quality of operation, maintenance and development • creation, implementation and maintenance of appropriate complexes of tools that guarantee the ability to control the quality of changes and indicators of the purpose of the operated, accompanied, developed system while maintaining high productivity of personnel at all stages of the LC of this system. 1.3
The literature distinguishes between the life cycle proces ses of systems and Software
Sustainment (or Sustaining). The first group consists of the processes that describe the
enabling system [
The main processes of LC systems of the first of the above types are described
sufficiently fully in [
The main problem in the creation of both types of systems are the processes of supporting the software LC as the most flexible part of the systems. The apparent simplicity of making changes to the software of target systems is actually quite a complex set of activities on the implementation and commissioning of complex decision-making systems. This is true both for fairly universal systems for the field of application (but related to decision support, for example, in the financial field or in the field of management of material flows, objects, industrial facilities), and in the field of control systems of material objects (vessels of all types, processing centers, etc.)
Changes to operating software always involve a number of risks due to: • lack of certainty as to the purpose of the changes, • insufficiently clearly defined quality criteria for the evaluation of the work performed, • a large number of links affected by change, • it is not always clear to the customer and the developer of the changes about the degree of impact of these changes on the already achieved by the system purpos e indicators and achievable as a result of changes in the value of these indicators (for example, productivity), • and a number of other factors.
For systems of the second type, which are called Software – Intensive Systems, the
SEI since 2005 forms a common approach to the restructuring of the industry to new
tasks of building industrial technology for such systems [
The need to reduce the operational risks of systems, including Software – Intensive
Systems, in the context of the development of requirements for systems in the course
of their LC led to a change in the point of view of the processes of ensuring
sustainable changes in the operating system together with teams of customers, operators,
system support, as well as specialists engaged in the development of the functionality of
systems according to the requirements of customers (stakeholders). Software
maintenance includes correcting the faults; improving performance or other attributes;
adapting to a changed environment. However, for the software included in the target
system, this is not enough to support the processes of ensuring the functioning of the
software in the system and for the processes of functional and non -functional
development of the software in the system [
In the collective work to support software of target system are changing in the direction of system integration and testing on target platform. That means that central issues became ensuring the activities of specialists who carry out the assembly (integration) of the system, comprehensive testing and testing of purpose indicators of the system on the target computing platform and in the processing of information close to the real. It is the solution of these tasks should be oriented and infrastructure to support processes and procedures of staff interaction.
Infrastructure for Software Support (Sustainment) has not to be separate. It partly must be part of the overall ITSM infrastructure (in the CM, help desk, documentation part) of the target system. At the same time, additional technological stands should be created for testing various levels of readiness of the developed (target) system. Such stands should have different levels of information security to perform complex works on automated complex functional testing of the system as a whole, as well as for load testing of software on the target architecture in order to assess the achievable purpo s e indicators of the system equipped with modified software (release or version of the software).
Quite large teams of specialists of various qualifications are involved in the maintenance and development of the system. The coordinated work of these specialists requires regulation of their activities.
The basis of the regulation is the careful setting of goals in v arious areas of activity in accordance with the established technological process of work and the established expected results of work. These objectives should be set out in the Support Plan document.
The Support Plan should be based on the selection of a reasonably valid software scheme of software releases over the medium term, for example, four software releases during the year on a quarterly basis. At the same time, each release should be defined by functionality, that is, by the composition of the requ irements implemented in it. Planning a series of releases allows all participants to pre-distribute efforts at clear planning intervals and form a single series – Stable Software Production Baseline for the year. Under this medium-term plan, it is easier to plan the finalization of documentation and training of all user groups (Sustainability staff training plan). Under the same schedule it is easy to plan a plan of testing and evaluation of system characteristics and the use of stands. The operations serv ice can also better organize its work, understanding the General scheme of work. The described organization of work allows you to build a well-planned process with estimated and predictable characteristics. 2.3
The formation of a stable technological production process allows us to formulate requirements for its automation. With a well-organized technological process, it is possible to reduce the variety of automation tools used and focus on the most time consuming operations and chains of operations that use the same data with a single level of information security. The center of gravity in the automation of course should be on the operations of integration of the system and complex testing. Automation of the most labor-intensive operations and processes will lead to a significant reduction in the complexity of work and increase in collective productivity of specialists participants of the software life cycle. 3
The main technological direction of works o n ensuring the life cycle of missioncritical systems for state and defense purposes is to reduce the total cost of owners h ip of the system and its software by streamlining, regulating and automating the life cycle processes. To date, in the domestic and foreign literature formed similar content approaches to solving this problem. The analysis of the available works shows the need to create targeted systems for the development of well-equipped centers of their technical support, which will significantly red uce the total cost of ownership of systems and reduce the risks of loss of quality of systems in their operation, maintenance and development.