Trade Studies

Typically, Trade Studies are conducted to identify and summarize the attributes of candidate products (or team members) that meet and/or exceed a set of technical and general requirements for each set of products or services needed. Such studies are usually performed with an eye toward proving that the selected products are compliant, competitive and cost-effective.

All Trade Study activities are supported by the power of CAI/SISCo's InfoCenter™ knowledge worker support system.

For Trade Studies conducted in support of major systems integration opportunities, CAI/SISCo's approach is to decompose the overall requirement into functional COTS products and perform the analysis at that level. For clients with products, we assist with an understanding of their competition's actual or horizon products within the general or a specific marketplace (e.g., federal government).

Product categories that have been the subjects of previous CAI/SISCo Trade Studies include:

Routers and Hubs;
LAN Technologies including LAN Emulation (LANE) Offerings;
Workstations and Servers;
DBMS and RDBMS systems;
Satellite Services;
ATM Switches (LAN/WAN);
SONET Add/Drop Multiplexors;
Video Servers; and
Domestic and International Network Services (e.g., Frame Relay, IP, ATM).

CAI/SISCo Trade Studies usually culminate in a management presentation that examines and evaluates all key factors for each product category using a numerical weighting scheme. This scheme enables the relative aggregated merits of each compliant product or service to be developed and the potential products to be rank ordered.