First PCs infiltrated offices as a standalone supplement to existing systems, and then they got wired in as dumb terminals with extra local capabilities. Client-server architectures centralized storage and some processing, but offloaded some kinds of processing and interfaces to local systems. The Web discarded the complex clients of client-server in favor of cheap and easy to deploy browsers, and once again most processing was centralized. Managers and architects of centralized systems are treated as experts, holding the keys to critical business information and processing, while the creators of that information, from cashiers to documentation writers to programmers to secretaries, are just doing their job. What's good for centralized systems isn't necessarily good for distributed systems, however.
Scalability demands compromises from users.
All output will similarly conform, and users just have to accept what they are given. On local systems, however, processing cycles aren't that expensive, and users may not have the power to demand that others send them information in the format their system wants. Similarly, they may have to produce results in multiple formats for multiple recipients. Standardization as an option, not a requirement In centralized systems, standards make processing possible. The demands of scalability require strict adherence to standards for input and output, and greater standardization makes it possible to do more things.