At 06:53 PM 2/27/04 -0500, Stephen Waterbury wrote:
Itamar Shtull-Trauring wrote:
On Fri, 2004-02-27 at 09:26, Phillip J. Eby wrote:
What is Twisted as a whole really for? ;)
Networking applications. That is, programs that involve communicating with other programs over a network, typically TCP/IP. Whereas "enterprise" is to me anyway a meaningless word in this context. What is the definition of an "enterprise application"?
I submit that the term "enterprise" has been over-buzzed to the point of near-meaninglessness, so it's pretty useless except in marketing literature, where meaninglessness is a useful quality. :)
That said, to me an "enterprise application" is any application that is specifically designed to interoperate with, and/or enable interoperability of, other software that is used in the processes of a "business" (in the most general sense).
I think that's about as specific as you can get. Like I say, *almost* meaningless, in that it could apply to almost anything, given enough "spin". ;)
I'm actually using it a bit more specifically than that; I'm specifically targeting applications that have a "shared resource domain" (and whose data integrity or availability has fiduciary consequences), or tools needed to develop, maintain or support such applications. IOW, a desktop email client (for example) wouldn't count, but a group issue tracker for emailed requests would. By "fiduciary consequences", I mean that if it's not running when it's supposed to be, or data integrity isn't maintained, it results in financial losses. By "shared resource domain", I effectively mean a multi-user application, or shared processing resources like a mail server. I think you'll find that these two concepts (shared resources and fiduciary responsibility) are the common themes underlying what most people mean when they talk about "enterprise" applications. Or at least, I think people who *buy* enterprise applications would stress these as defining characteristics, whether the people who *sell* such applications really fulfill them or not. :)