Open standards and architectures enable clients to interoperate with different servers in a well defined and non-proprietary way. All the major players in the enterprise computing space are building systems for web-enabling existing applications. Oracle has made its database servers accessible to web browsers. Microsoft has engineered its BackOffice family to work with the web, and to plug into other applications. These very same companies are moving towards web-architected applications.
Most organizations have a large investment in systems that have been built up over the years.
These form an integral part of the information infrastructure. In commercial applications, a multitude of databases and business logic exists on mainframes and minicomputers. In science and engineering, numerical models, simulation, and data access software are installed on a multiplicity of platforms. It is both unreasonable and uneconomic to expect an immediate transition to network-centric applications. Yet, they are difficult to maintain and even more difficult to modify.