Proceedings of the 2006 Winter Simulation Conference L. F. Perrone, F. P. Wieland, J. Liu, B. G. Lawson, D. M. Nicol, and R. M. Fujimoto, eds. ABSTRACT Distributed simulation is used very little in industry, espe- cially when compared with the interest in distributed simu- lation from research and from the military domain. In order to answer the question why industry lags behind, the au- thors have carried out an extensive survey, using a ques- tionnaire and interviews, with users, vendors, and develop- ers of distributed simulation products, as well as with vendors of non-distributed simulation software. Based on the results the discrepancies between the different “worlds” become clear enough to enable the formulation of clear guidelines for further developments of standards for dis- tributed simulation. This paper reports on the first part of the survey, namely a questionnaire targeted at vendors of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) simulation packages. Analysis of the answers obtained establish that it is indeed the case that industry is relatively underdeveloped in the area of distributed simulation and also sheds some light on the reasons behind this. 1 INTRODUCTION Distributed simulation is an application of distributed sys- tems technology that enables models to be coupled over computer networks so that they interoperate during a simu- lation run. Initial research on distributed simulation has been conducted in the defense (Singhal and Zyda 1999). It is a promising approach allowing for the interoperability between models and the reusability of them (Fujimoto 2000). Besides interoperability and reusability Fujimoto mentions other benefits of distributed simulation, such as reduced execution time, geographical distribution, integrat- ing simulation models from different vendors and fault tol- erance. Other benefits are apparent as well, for instance the possibility to reuse existing components, support for in- formation hiding, and support for integrating heterogene- ous models (Boer 2005). In order to carry out distributed simulation, simulation standards were initiated in the defense community, culmi- nating in the High Level Architecture (HLA), which is the most recent and most advanced approach for integrating simulation models and the facto standard for all simula- tions of the Department of Defense (DMSO 1998a), (DMSO 1998b), (DMSO 1998c), (Kuhl, et al. 1999). Although the initial step in designing and developing the HLA standard was carried out by the defense commu- nity, this large effort was intended to support the industrial community as well. However, in the industrial domain ap- plication of distributed simulation is still in its infancy. The research community is aware of this phenomenon. In order to find out the reasons behind it, in the last years separate panel discussions were organized at the Winter Simulation Conference (Taylor, et al. 2002), (Taylor, et al. 2003). Some researchers have proposed methods for migrating the HLA concept into the industrial domain (Straßburger 2001), (Rabe, et al. 2001), (McLean and Riddick 2000), (Revetria, et al. 2003) which led to new insights regarding the applicability of HLA in industry. Furthermore, a forum, called HLA-CSPIF was initiated that aims to create refer- ence models for integration of distributed simulation mod- els created in commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) simulation packages (Taylor, et al. 2006). This forum has recently be- come a CSPI Product Development group under the Simu- lation Interoperability Standards Organization, Most computer simulation models in industry are cre- ated using simulation packages (Nikoukaran, et al. 1999). COTS simulation packages are the most advanced and widely used packages that are commercially available (Nikoukaran, et al. 1999), (Tewoldeberhan, et al. 2002). Law and Kelton identify several advantages of COTS simulation packages over general purpose programming languages, explaining why simulation modeling has be- come more and more popular in recent years (Law and Kelton 2000). DISTRIBUTED SIMULATION IN INDUSTRY – A SURVEY PART 1 – THE COTS VENDORS Csaba Attila Boer TBA BV Vulcanusweg 259, 2624 AV, Delft, THE NETHERLANDS Arie de Bruin Delft University of Technology Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science Mekelweg 4, 2628 CD, Delft THE NETHERLANDS Alexander Verbraeck Delft University of Technology Faculty of Technology, Policy and Management Jaffalaan 5, 2628 BX, Delft THE NETHERLANDS 1053 1-4244-0501-7/06/$20.00 ©2006 IEEE