46 IEEE Software March/April 1998 0740-7459/98/$10.00 © 1998 IEEE lthough procuring off-the-shelf systems from commercial suppliers is increasingly popular in our industry,fitting those systems to customer requirements remains problematic. The London Ambulance Service fiasco in 1992 exemplifies a system failure due, at least in part, to poor commercial off-the-shelf product selection.Following the system’s introduction in October 1992, a number of social and technical problems arose. The entire system descended into chaos, was taken off-line, and the LAS reverted to the manual dis- patching system.The use of COTS software,also known as component-based soft- ware engineering,introduces new problems for requirements engineers,including when to acquire new customer requirements and when to reduce the number of candidate products. Requirements engineering acquires,models,and validates functional and non- functional requirements. System design specifies the functional and physical ar- chitectures as well as the hardware and software design to meet these require- ments. Systems integration involves product acquisition, prototype integration, and integration testing. The integrated system is then evaluated against criteria that include risk and cost.Direction determines the process’s high-level objectives during each iteration. Neil A. Maiden and Cornelius Ncube, City University, London Acquiring COTS Softw are Selection Requirements Commercial off-the-shelf software can save development time and money if you can find a package that meets your customer’s needs. The authors propose a model for matching COTS product features with user requirements. A .