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  Architectural design of digital business systems 

 The starting point for design of digital business systems is to ensure that a common architec-

ture exists across the company in terms of hardware and software technology, applications 

and business processes. This goal is summarised in Figure 3.5(b). 

Digital business systems follow the same  

 client–  server  model

  architecture of many busi-

ness information systems created in the 1990s. For the digital business, the clients were tra-

ditionally employees, suppliers or customers’ desktop PCs which gave the ‘ front-  end’ access 

point to digital business applications. Today increasingly, they are mobile devices such as 

smartphones and tablets as shown by the trends in increasing mobile usage described in 

 Chapters   3    and  4 . These client devices are connected to a ‘ back-  end’ server computer via 

an intranet, extranet or Internet. In  Chapters   3    and  6  we have discussed the management 

issues involved with selecting ‘Software as a Service’ (SaaS) digital business systems, which 

are  client–  server systems where the client is a web browser on a computer or mobile device 

and the server is located outside the organisation and the application process is commonly 

shared with many other companies in a ‘ multi-  tenancy’ model.   

 A key design decision in  client–  server systems is how different tasks involved in delivering 

a working application to the users are distributed between client and server. The typical situ-

ation for these tasks in a digital business system is: 

   

●  

   Data storage . Predominantly on server. Client storage is ideally limited 

to cookies, which are then related to the data for the user which are 

stored on database servers. SaaS systems oft en use a cloud of multiple 

servers in diff erent locations to deliver these services more effi  ciently, 

as  again  described  in   Chapter   3   .  

  

●  

   Query processing . Predominantly on the server, although some valida-

tion can be performed on the client.