Chapter 11. Business Application Fortresses

Business application fortresses are the bread and butter of your enterprise. These are the fortresses that actually make you money. They process your account withdrawals, your stock purchases, and all your other purchases. They deserve your respect and gratitude.

If your business application fortresses are designed well, your enterprise will run smoothly. If not, you will have problems. Badly designed business application fortresses result in enterprise systems that perform poorly, scale sluggishly, and fail frequently. When I examine sickly enterprise systems, invariably I find the underlying disease in the business application area.

Design errors in business application fortresses are particularly pernicious. Often the problems do not become apparent until huge amounts of coding have been completed. By then the cure, if it exists at all, is tremendously expensive. So it is critical to design these fortresses correctly from the beginning.