Centralized database save cost in geographic dispersion
Geographic dispersion of organizations is not an entirely new concept. Large firms have connected major regional offices to their centralized databases using dedicated lines for years. The difference now is that geographic dispersion is taken to greater extremes to provide cost savings and improved contact with the firm’s customers. Large regional offices are increasingly replaced with smaller locations in all of the firm’s markets. This change greatly increases the number of dedicated lines which, if provided at the same service levels as in the older centralized systems, could add up to an enormous expense. Clearly, the traditional centralized database model creates a problem for firms wishing to benefit by such increased geographic dispersion.
Another aspect of the geographic dispersion problem is the growing abundance of portable computer use by mobile professionals. A common example of this is the travelling salesperson using a laptop-based database to query available inventory and take customer orders. The nature of this work prevents a full-time network connection, and the database on the mobile system must somehow be linked to the firm’s master database at regular intervals to update the distributed copies of any data that has been changed. This is another case where geographic dispersion has rendered the centralized database architecture obsolete.
Geographically dispersed organizations require an architecture that allows the bulk of data retrieval and updates to be performed on fast and inexpensive local area networks (LANs). This architecture should reserve the more expensive WAN for data updates that are relevant to other sites. Mobile users should have a copy of the data for their local use and an efficient means to update using a part-time connection.