What are the differences between commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products, open systems, and non-developmental items (NDI)?
Non-developmental item (NDI) is defined as the following: • any product that is available in the commercial marketplace • any previously developed product in use by a U.S. agency (federal, state, or local) or a foreign government that has a mutual defense agreement with the U.S. • any product described in the first two points above that requires only modifications to meet requirements • any product that is being produced, but not yet in the commercial marketplace, that satisfies the above criteria [DFARS] A commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) product is a product, such as an item, material, component, subsystem, or system, sold or traded to the general public in the course of normal business operations at prices based on established catalog or market prices [FARs]. You can see from these two definitions that COTS is a subset of NDI. The general point of NDI is that it is something that your program does not need to pay to develop because it already exists. COTS products are that subset of
