The business of application portability

Abstract

m The focus of this issue of StandardView is on application portability. At its most basic level, portability is an economic issue. It centers on leveraging an existing investment and deploying it in new ways. It’s about being able to run an application written for one platform on an entirely different platform. It’s about saving time and money, and maintaining quality. Portability is fundamentally a business issue, not a technical one. ortability is also an old issue. Portable Fortran in the late 1960s first gave rise to the need to move scientific applications from outdated equipment to the then brand-new. From the earliest days of application development, rapid advancement of computer hardware and fierce competition among platform vendors have created the need for moving applications. Business requirements change, integration requirements become more stringent, mergers and acquisitions force previously separate MIS groups to exchange data and applications, and to adopt new platform standards. All these factors create a landscape where application portability is key to competitiveness and to the abilities to innovate and provide high-quality application support to line areas.