Therefore, the customer's competitive position rests on dependable information about Mercury product evolution. On the surface however, there is not much difference between predicting multi-year technology trends and in forecasting the stock market. If a stock broker insisted he had a sure-fire, guaranteed method of predicting market behavior, most prudent investors would quickly seek another advisor. Rapid Insertion Rapid insertion is the ability to quickly evolve a product line to be responsive to market forces and customer requirements.
Most computer systems claim the ability to evolve.
By definition, an architecture design-ed for rapid insertion lowers the time and cost barriers associated with delivering products based on new technology. The model-year upgrade concept is based on the principle that a program manager looking 24 to 36 months or more into the future cannot realistically have complete information on a problem or the available technology to solve that problem. Predictions of user needs are a prerequisite for a technology vendor's outlook, yet future user requirements are very susceptible to change. If an architecture is properly designed for rapid insertion, then instead of unreliably trying to predict needs and solutions four years out, a far more accurate one-year forecast is used to deliver the right technology response to a more clearly understood problem. In order for model-year upgrade to work at a system level, the fundamental components of a rapid insertion architecture must each transform quickly and independently of each other.