Why are Enterprise Applications considered to be so much more robust than individual consumer software such as Word, Excel, or Adobe CS? Explain citing some specific examples.
Enterprise application software or EAS is considered much more robust than individual consumer software such as Word, Excel, or Adobe CS.
An enterprise caters to a large number of people and hence the number of user-base of an enterprise application software is also huge typically in hundreds or even thousands. A consumer application software caters to a single user or at the most members of one small family. Hence the software architecture of an enterprise application software is much more complex compared to a consumer software application.
Robust software and complexity
An enterprise application software is a complex software and hence has to be designed in such a way so that the software remains robust. A robust software can cope with errors that may arise due to a large number of users using the software simultaneously. A software that is not robust may crash easily under heavy load from multiple users. Such is not the case for consumer application software, which is much simpler. Consider the consumer application software such as Office or Word that is being used by a single home user. This software is only used by a single user and hence such a software need not be robust. It can easily manage a load of a single user without ever crashing.
Highly Scalable - A need for robustness
Another characteristic of an enterprise application software is that these are large scale software or these are highly scalable compared to consumer software. By scalable we mean that the number of users can be increased or scaled up as and when required in the future.
An enterprise application software is usually configured to accommodate different user roles such as administrator, normal user, users with different privileges etc. This is never the case with consumer application software having one or two users.
Some Specific Examples - EAS vs Consumer software
As an example of enterprise application software (EAS), consider a large enterprise having thousands of employees using enterprise-wide ERP application software such as SAP. Now, this ERP software is used by all the employees of the company. Thus thousands of users are accessing it at any given point of time. Many users will have different roles accessing different sections of the same software. Such complex software has to be very robust.
Now, consider a consumer application software such as any of the Microsoft Office applications Word, Excel or Powerpoint. This will be used by a single home user. Hence there is no question of scalability or robustness here. The software will simpler than enterprise-wide application software.
The following table summarises the main differences between these two categories of software and summarizes why EAS is considered to be a robust software:
| Enterprise Application Software(EAS) | Consumer Application Software |
|---|---|
| Highly complex software and hence need for robustness is there | Simpler Software and hence need not be as robust as EAS. |
| Very robust software. Not prone to error. | Need not be robust |
| Highly scalable, as thousands of users are connected to it in a single organization. This increases the need for robustness | Cannot scale up as the user connecting in a home environment is very limited. No need for robustness compared to EAS |
| High price and hence very costly software | Low priced, cheap software |
| Some examples are ERP software such as SAP | Some examples are consumer home edition software such as Microsoft Office. |
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