Enterprise software, also known as enterprise application software (EAS), is

computer software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...

used to satisfy the needs of an

organization An organization or organisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is an entity—such as a company, an institution, or an association—comprising one or more people and having a particular purpose. The word is derived f ...

rather than individual users. Such organizations include businesses, schools, interest-based user groups, clubs, charities, and governments. Enterprise software is an integral part of a (computer-based)

information system An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, store, and distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems are composed by four components: task, people ...

; a collection of such software is called an enterprise system. These systems handle a number of operations in an organization to enhance the business and management reporting tasks. The systems must process the information at a relatively high speed and can be deployed across a variety of networks. Services provided by enterprise software are typically business-oriented tools. As enterprises have similar departments and systems in common, enterprise software is often available as a suite of customizable programs. Generally, the complexity of these tools requires specialist capabilities and specific knowledge. Enterprise computing is the information technology (IT) tool that businesses use for efficient production operations and back-office support. These IT tools cover database management, customer relationship management, supply chain management, business process management and so on.

Definitions

Enterprise software is a collection of computer programs that have common business applications, tools for modeling how the entire organization works, and development tools for building applications unique to the organization. The software is intended to solve an enterprise-wide problem, rather than a departmental problem. Enterprise-level software aims to improve the enterprise's productivity and efficiency by providing business logic support functionality. According to Martin Fowler, "Enterprise applications are about the display, manipulation, and storage of large amounts of often complex data and the support or automation of

business processes A business process, business method or business function is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks by people or equipment in which a specific sequence produces a service or product (serves a particular business goal) for a parti ...

with that data." Although there is no single, widely accepted list of enterprise software characteristics, they generally include

performance A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Management science In the work place ...

scalability Scalability is the property of a system to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources to the system. In an economic context, a scalable business model implies that a company can increase sales given increased resources. For example, a ...

, and

robustness Robustness is the property of being strong and healthy in constitution. When it is transposed into a system, it refers to the ability of tolerating perturbations that might affect the system’s functional body. In the same line ''robustness'' ca ...

. Furthermore, enterprise software typically has interfaces to othe
enterprise software
(for example LDAP to

directory service In computing, a directory service or name service maps the names of network resources to their respective network addresses. It is a shared information infrastructure for locating, managing, administering and organizing everyday items and network r ...

s) and is centrally managed (a single admin page, for example). Enterprise

application software Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a ...

performs business functions such as order processing, procurement, production scheduling, customer information management, energy management, and accounting. It is typically hosted on servers and provides simultaneous services to many users, typically over a computer network. This is in contrast to a single-user application that is executed on a user's personal computer and serves only one user at a time.

Enterprise system

Enterprise systems (ES) are large-scale enterprise software packages that support business processes, information flows, reporting, and data analytics in complex organizations. While ES are generally packaged enterprise application software (PEAS) systems they can also be bespoke, custom-developed systems created to support a specific organization's needs. Types of enterprise systems include: * enterprise resources planning (ERP) systems, *

enterprise planning systems An enterprise planning system covers the methods of planning for the internal and external factors that affect an enterprise. These factors generally fall under PESTLE. PESTLE refers to political, economic, social, technological, legal and environ ...

, and *

customer relationship management Customer relationship management (CRM) is a process in which a business or other organization administers its interactions with customers, typically using data analysis to study large amounts of information. CRM systems compile data from a r ...

software. Although

data warehousing In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for reporting and data analysis and is considered a core component of business intelligence. DWs are central repositories of integr ...

business intelligence Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical ...

systems are enterprise-wide packaged application software often sold by ES vendors, since they do not directly support execution of business processes, they are often excluded from the term. Enterprise systems are built on software platforms, such as SAP's

NetWeaver SAP NetWeaver is a software stack for many of SAP SE's applications. The SAP NetWeaver Application Server, sometimes referred to as WebAS, is the runtime environment for the SAP applications and all of the mySAP Business Suite runs on SAP WebA ...

and Oracle's Fusion, and databases. From a hardware perspective, enterprise systems are the servers, storage and associated software that large businesses use as the foundation for their IT infrastructure. These systems are designed to manage large volumes of critical data and thus are typically designed to provide high levels of transaction performance and data security.

Types

Enterprise software can be categorized by business function. Each type of enterprise application can be considered a "system" due to the integration with a firm's business processes. Categories of enterprise software may overlap due to this systemic interpretation. For example, IBM's Business Intelligence platform (

Cognos Cognos Incorporated was an Ottawa, Ontario-based company making business intelligence (BI) and performance management (PM) software. Founded in 1969, at its peak Cognos employed almost 3,500 people and served more than 23,000 customers in ov ...

), integrates with a

predictive analytics Predictive analytics encompasses a variety of statistical techniques from data mining, predictive modeling, and machine learning that analyze current and historical facts to make predictions about future or otherwise unknown events. In busine ...

platform (SPSS) and can obtain records from its database packages (Infosphere, DB2). Blurred lines between package functions make delimitation difficult, and larger software companies define these somewhat arbitrary categories in many ways. Nevertheless, certain industry-standard product categories have emerged, and these are shown below: *

Business Intelligence Business intelligence (BI) comprises the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis and management of business information. Common functions of business intelligence technologies include reporting, online analytical ...

(BI) *

Business Process Management Business process management (BPM) is the discipline in which people use various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and automate business processes. Any combination of methods used to manage a company's business p ...

(BPM) *

Content Management System A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content ( content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...

(CMS) *

Customer Relationship Management Customer relationship management (CRM) is a process in which a business or other organization administers its interactions with customers, typically using data analysis to study large amounts of information. CRM systems compile data from a r ...

(CRM) *

DataBase Management System In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases ...

(DBMS) - such as

Master Data Management Master data management (MDM) is a technology-enabled discipline in which business and information technology work together to ensure the uniformity, accuracy, stewardship, semantic consistency and accountability of the enterprise's official shared ...

(MDM) and

Data Warehousing In computing, a data warehouse (DW or DWH), also known as an enterprise data warehouse (EDW), is a system used for reporting and data analysis and is considered a core component of business intelligence. DWs are central repositories of integr ...

(DW, DWH or EDW) *

Enterprise Resource Planning Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is the integrated management of main business processes, often in real time and mediated by software and technology. ERP is usually referred to as a category of business management software—typically a sui ...

(ERP) - which is a broad category covering Accounting, Human Resource, Corporate performance and governance, Customer Services, Sales, Procurement, Production, and Distribution * Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) *

Human Resource Management Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture ...

(HRM) *

Knowledge Management Knowledge management (KM) is the collection of methods relating to creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieve organisational objectives by making ...

(KM) *

Low-code Development Platforms A low-code development platform (LCDP) provides a development environment used to create application software through a graphical user interface. A low-coded platform may produce entirely operational applications, or require additional coding for s ...

(LCDP) *

Product Data Management Product data management (PDM) should not be confused with product information management (PIM). PDM is the name of a business function within product lifecycle management (PLM) that is denotes the management and publication of product data. In sof ...

(PDM) *

Product Information Management Product information management (PIM) is the process of managing all the information required to market and sell products through distribution channels. This product data is created by an internal organization to support a multichannel marketing st ...

(PIM) * Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) *

Supply Chain Management In commerce, supply chain management (SCM) is the management of the flow of goods and services including all processes that transform raw materials into final products between businesses and locations. This can include the movement and st ...

(SCM) *

Software Configuration Management In software engineering, software configuration management (SCM or S/W CM) is the task of tracking and controlling changes in the software, part of the larger cross-disciplinary field of configuration management. SCM practices include revisio ...

(SCM) - such as

Version Control System In software engineering, version control (also known as revision control, source control, or source code management) is a class of systems responsible for managing changes to computer programs, documents, large web sites, or other collections ...

(VCS) * Networking and Information Security ** Intrusion Detection Prevention (IDS) - and by extension

Intrusion Prevention System An intrusion detection system (IDS; also intrusion prevention system or IPS) is a device or software application that monitors a network or systems for malicious activity or policy violations. Any intrusion activity or violation is typically rep ...

(IPS) **

Software Defined Networking Software-defined networking (SDN) technology is an approach to network management that enables dynamic, programmatically efficient network configuration in order to improve network performance and monitoring, making it more like cloud computing ...

(SDN) - including SD-WAN ** Security Information Event Management (SIEM) - which can combine

Security Information Management Security information management (SIM) is an information security industry term for the collection of data such as log files into a central repository for trend analysis. Overview SIM products generally are software agents running on the computer s ...

(SIM) and Security Event Management (SEM) * Others types of software which do not fit into well-known standard categories, including

backup software Backup software are computer programs used to perform a backup; they create supplementary exact copies of files, databases or entire computers. These programs may later use the supplementary copies to restore the original contents in the event of d ...

, Billing Management, Accounting software

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Enterprise software Business software Enterprise architecture

Definitions

Enterprise system

Types

See also

References