Before standards like OpenVPX and VITA 51.1 became the norm, rugged computing was plagued by the "proprietary trap." Companies would build incredible backplanes and boards, but they wouldn’t talk to each other. You couldn't mix a CPU board from Vendor A with a switch board from Vendor B without a headache of custom wiring and firmware.
By providing more realistic (less pessimistic) failure rates than older military standards, it helps engineers avoid costly and unnecessary hardware overdesign. vita 51.1 pdf