See requirements.
A characteristic of a software architecture that the cost of the supporting equipment required to expand use increases linearly (or less than linearly) with that use.
A set of safeguards to prevent unauthorized or damaging attacks, such as theft, destruction, or modification of information, theft of services, denial of services to others by excessive use (denial-of-service attack), forgery, or mimicry. Security is based on the technological and operational enforcement of a defined set of security policies. These policies can take many forms, such as access control (right to use certain resources), confidentiality (the ability to use or communicate information without its being usable by others), and privacy. Regarding users, policies are typically based on social criteria such as organizational role and trust.
See computer.
See services.
See release.
See quality of service (QOS).
Software services are features and capabilities based on equipment and software accessed by invoking actions over a network or from locally executing software, often shared by multiple applications or multiple users. Provisioning and operations of the facilities, equipment, and software supporting services may by undertaken by an independent organization called a service provider. Like software itself, providers can be divided into infrastructure service providers (ISPs) and application service providers (ASPs).
See accountability.
See accountability.
See authentication.
Comprises a set of instructions directing the actions of a processor and represented as either source code (most suitable for writing or reading by humans) or object code (suitable for direct processor execution). Application software meets the specialized needs of users, groups, or organizations in their domains of interest and activity, and infrastructure software provides common services utilized by a range of applications. Embedded software is bundled with equipment and controls an integral portion of its functionality, and component software is designed to be composed into a number of software programs.
See design.
See processing.
See requirements.
See development.
A well-documented and complete specification available to anybody to implement. A standard is open when available to all without need for a prior business relationship and unencumbered by intellectual property restrictions. Standards can be the outcome of an explicit standardization process, or arise from market forces (de facto standard), or be mandated by some governmental or regulatory authority (de jure standard). Common targets of standardization include information representations, a partial architecture (reference model), and interfaces. A metastandard defines a language to describe something rather than describing that something directly.
A rationale for the sharing of resources arising from the smoothing of load variation when a single resource (processor or communication link) is shared by many users. A side effect is congestion, or temporary oversubscription of the resource resulting in excess loss or delay. Congestion can be mitigated by many means, such as congestion control (controlling the load presented by its source), admission control (selectively denying new uses), overprovisioning (deliberately provisioning substantially more resources than needed), or congestion pricing (charging a premium price conditionally during periods of congestion).
One of three supporting information technologies, it conveys digital information from one time to another.
See layering.
See price.
Exploiting the self-aware property of software, the ability to extract payments for its use regardless of how it is distributed (even user to user).
A firm or other organization that licenses a software distribution or sells equipment or information appliance to others; generally divided into application suppliers and infrastructure suppliers.
See network.
See lock-in.
See cryptography.
An integrated set of interacting (typically heterogeneous) modules (which can themselves be hardware, software, and equipment) realizing higher purposes. An open system includes a rich set of open interfaces that enable the mixing and matching of modules from different suppliers.
See operations.
See integration.
See operations.