Three Software Application Categories
If there are three kinds of customers, then I also have a list of three categories in Software Applications. They are the following:
Information systems and other applications developed for use within a company (such as the payroll system being used to calculate the take-home pay for our next paycheck). This category is the basis for the information system/information technology industry, or IS/IT.
Software developed and sold as commercial products (such as the word processor). Companies developing this type of software are often referred to as independent software vendors, or ISVs.
Software that runs on computers embedded in other devices, machines, or complex systems (such as those contained in the airplane we are writing this in; the cell phones we just used to call our spouses; the automobile we’ll use to get to our eventual destination). We’ll call this type of software embedded-systems applications, or embedded applications.