Components

Performance and reliability are very important criteria for selecting software. In most procurement exercises however, price is also a determining factor when comparing quotes from multiple vendors. Price comparisons do have a role, but usually not in terms of a simple comparison of purchase prices. Rather, price issues tend to arise when comparing total cost of ownership, which includes both the purchase price and ongoing costs for support (and licence renewal) over the real life span of the product. Thus, the selection of the components for the VODCA package has been a very important step because of all the consequences on the final price of our product. First, we investigated the availability of open source projects based on different selection criteria, which are summarised in the following list:

• Features,
• Stability,
• Performance,
• Mature,
• Support, and
• License compatibility.