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The Evolution of Application Delivery
As computers and networks have evolved, so too has the location for application deployment. In some ways, it is a case of, “Déjà vu all over again.”
Traditional On-Premise Installed Application
“Back in the day,” applications ran on a mainframe with the “dumb terminal” as just an input/output device. The mainframe did all the heavy lifting. The coming of the mini-computer only changed the size (and price) of the box. However, with the coming of micro-computers, processing power got so individualized that it was a nightmare to administer.
Multi-user operating systems and faster networks brought us client/server application deployment. Again, we had servers doing the heavy lifting and client processes running on PCs. Characteristics of this phase include:
- On-premise hardware, server, network, database, backup provisioning by customer
- Ongoing maintenance and management performed by customer
- Customer responsible for providing logical and physical security
- Typically lengthy rollout/update cycles
As applications proliferated, so did the servers in ever-growing data centers. While this continues to drive a movement towards virtual and blade servers, the power consumption, cooling requirements and administrative overhead put greater demand on IT budget and staff sophistication. A new approach is gaining acceptance.
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