Why Are Enterprise Applications So Diverse?

Today, even small businesses operate in different geographical locations and service different industries. This can create a number of challenges including those related to language, currencies, different regulatory requirements, and diverse industry expectations. For large organizations with a wider reach, the challenges are even greater. As organizations grow, they also need to keep track of huge amounts of information across different business areas. Modern enterprise applications need to be able to cope with these demands in a timely manner. In this chapter we provide a brief introduction to modern enterprise applications, describing selected tasks they perform and the business areas that they cover.