IBM is not addressing the needs of horizontal software, such as personal productivity and office automation. IBM is using a phased development approach. In the first phase IBM will provide the framework for the general ledger, accounts receivable, order processing, and warehouse management functions. Applications that leverage San Francisco are available now. Pretty much anybody who s anybody in the software development world has signed up with IBM, with the exception of Microsoft.
Developers can leverage any or all of the layers to provide value to an instance of an application.
It s the responsibility of the developer to create the client portion of the application. The developer customizes the application using the framework as a foundation. The lowest layer is known as the Base. It s the layer that interacts with the native features of the platform. The Base layer manages the interfaces to the operating system as well as other applications and the network.