Jan Otten

"In the United States, many solutions such as Communicator, for instance, are being utilised which could also be put to very good use in the Netherlands for crisis management and contingency plans. One advantage is that these products are often “commercial off-the-shelf” products (COTS). COTS solutions are products which are “ready to use”, easy to install and suitable for use with existing system components and applications. COTS products generally have a larger group of users, which means that the costs per user for maintenance, support and migration to a new operating system are limited. The development of tailor-made solutions usually costs far more time and money while incurring greater risks. In my opinion, crisis management in the Netherlands would benefit from COTS solutions which have been tried and tested throughout the world in daily usage. Respond concentrates entirely on tried and tested technology for crisis management, and is always on the look out for more."