What are Enterprise Applications?
The simplest definition of enterprise applications is that they are business applications. In terms of usage, it denotes huge business applications. In the corporate world today, these applications are complex, component-based, scalable, mission-critical and distributed. Organizations may deploy these applications on a variety of platforms such as the internet, corporate networks, or intranets. Unlike other apps, business applications are user friendly, data-centric, with stringent conditions for security, maintenance and administration. This should tell you that they are highly complex systems.
When you design functional business applications, you are satisfying different separate requirements. Importantly, every development decision you take to meet each need affects other requirements. By failing to meet any of these requirements, the entire project could fail.
Overview of Enterprise applications
In this section, you will learn more about the design and development of business applications. Most app developers use Java EE platform to come up with large-scale, reliable, multi-tiered, secure and scalable network applications. The main aim of developing enterprise applications is to offer solutions to problems in large enterprises to ensure their smooth running. In an increasingly networked world, the benefits of these business applications are not limited to large-scale organizations; they are becoming essential to small organizations and even individuals.
These applications are complex because of the special features they have in terms of security and reliability. However, with Java EE, it is possible to minimize the complexity of these applications by offering a development model, API, together with a runtime environment, which makes developers to focus on the functionality of the application. In a multi-tiered world of business applications, the functionality of an app is differentiated into unique functional areas known as tiers. The tiers include client tier, data tier, and middle tier.
The client tier has a client program, which sends requests to the middle tier. On the other hand, the middle tier handles requests from clients and process application data before storing it into the data tier permanently. This explains why the data tier is sometimes called the enterprise information systems tier.
Why business applications are important
With the emergence of software applications, companies, especially large organizations are able to handle critical business services with a lot of ease. From customer relationships to supply chain and business intelligence, solutions are sought within a short time to ensure excellent service delivery. Thus, enterprise applications come with a host of advantages, making them a must have in the business world. Among others, the streamline business operations, enhance healthy data collection and analysis, and allow effective communication among different parties within the organization. Here are the benefits in details.
The first benefit is about information sharing. Business applications allow smooth flow of information among a range of software programs in an organization and from external sources. With this, it is possible to consolidate data collection and eliminate redundancies to enhance efficiency.
Besides sharing of information within an organization, business applications are good at process automation. They can be useful in streamlining processes, which have data from different software applications. The applications further reduce IT complexities in organizations. Obviously, enterprise-level organizations experience challenges to adapt to new technologies. With these applications, it is possible to overcome such challenges without crippling the operations of a company. They also enhance organizational agility, as a company is able to identify and respond to opportunities promptly.
Disadvantages of enterprise applications
From the above discussion, it is evident that enterprise applications offer a wide range of solutions to large-scale business organizations. They help companies create products, track orders, and incorporating revenues, costs and profits. With these applications, companies are able to streamline their process. However, business applications have their fair share of drawbacks. Here are a few:
The first demerit is cost. Implementing and managing business application systems can be costly for small-scale companies, which lack financial muscles. Another source of cost is in licensing. Companies must purchase licenses in order to receive services, including technical support and upgrading software. Lastly, in cases where business applications are incompatible with a company’s legacy systems, it may incur extra costs by acquiring new computers and servers and higher more consultancy services. Other disadvantages of enterprise applications include training and turnover, and difficulties in customizing.
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Sources:
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?EnterpriseApplication
http://singlemindconsulting.com/blog/cort-buchholz/top-4-enterprise-application-integration-benefits
http://www.ehow.co.uk/list_6282904_disadvantages-enterprise-systems.html
http://www.informatictech.com/news-articles/4-benefits-of-enterprise-application-integration/
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/E/enterprise_application.html
https://docs.oracle.com/javaee/6/firstcup/doc/gcrky.html
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa267045%28v=vs.60%29.aspx