As we enter the 21st century, software has become a critical part of our businesses, our products, and our daily working environment. Anytime software fails, businesses incur losses through lost worker productivity, lost revenue, lost potential sales, lost customers, lost or corrupted data, and expenses necessary to bring systems back up, and to recover and reconstitute data. In spite of the overwhelming dependence on software, businesses today have little basis on which to judge the quality of software in order to make informed software procurement decisions. Currently, businesses rely on the reputation of the software vendor, software vendor marketing, anecdotal evidence from colleagues, and published software reviews in order to decide which software applications to buy. Even published reviews rarely deal with the quality of the software, nor can they since they do not have adequate time or resources to test the software. As a result, businesses have no independent, third-party appraisal of the quality of software on which their businesses will depend prior to buying the software. We aim to change this and in the process change the way software is produced, marketed, and purchased.
A software certificate can be a powerful weapon for software consumers to gauge the reliability of software in different configurations and environments. A certificate will also serve as a powerful marketing and differentiating tool for software vendors who can pitch quantitative statements about the reliability of their software products in different environments. The certificate is provided to the vendor, who can choose to release the certificate, or choose to improve the reliability of the product and re-certify before releasing the certificate.
Dr. Jeffrey Voas is an extremely active researcher in this area.
Limited Software Warranties (PS / PDF)
J. Voas
To be presented at ECBS 2000, April 2000.
Dependability Certification of Software Components (PS / PDF)
J. Voas and J. Payne
Journal of Systems and Software, 2000.
Third-Party Usage Profiling: A Model for Optimizing the Mass-Marketed Software Industry (PS / PDF)
J. Voas
Submitted to IEEE Software.
"User Participation"-Based Software Certification (PS / PDF / Word)
J. Voas
To appear in IEEE Computer, early 2000.
A Recipe for Certifying High Assurance Software (PS / PDF)
J. Voas
IEEE Software, July 1999.
User Participation-Based Software Certification (PS / PDF)
J. Voas
In proceedings of Eurovav'99, Oslo, Norway, June 1999.
The Software Quality Certification Triangle (PS / PDF / HTML)
J. Voas
Crosstalk, November, 1998.
An Approach for Certifying Security in Software Components (PS / PDF)
A. Ghosh, G. McGraw
Proceedings of the 21st National Information Systems Security Conference, October 5-8, 1998, Crystal City, VA.
An Approach to Certifying Off-the-Shelf Software Components (PS / PDF)
J. Voas
IEEE Computer, June, 1998.
Defensive Approaches to Testing Systems that Contain COTS and Third-Party Functionality (PS / PDF)
J. Voas
In Proc. of 15th Int'l. Conference and Exposition on Testing Computer Software, June, 1998.
Software Certification Laboratories? (PS / PDF)
J. Voas
Crosstalk, April 1998.
A Defensive Approach to Testing Systems that Contain COTS and Third-Party Functionality (PS / PDF)
J. Voas
In the Proceedings AQUIS '98, Venice, April 1998.
Certifying Y2K 'Fixes' (PS / PDF)
J. Voas
Crosstalk, January 1998.