Evolution of Enterprise Software
Not too long ago, mainframes ruled the world, and all software was tied to this central entity. The advantages of such a centralized approach included the simplicity of dealing with a single system for all processing needs, colocation of all resources, and the like. On the disadvantage front, it meant having to deal with physical limitations of scalability, single points of failure, limited accessibility from remote locations, and so on.
Such centralized applications are commonly referred to as single tier applications. The Random House dictionary defines a tier as “one of a series of rows, rising one behind or above another.” In software, a tier is primarily an abstraction and its main purpose is to help us understand ...
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