Software architectures for e-commerce computing systems with external hosting

Several medium-to-large companies are currently in the process of using external hosting to deploy their Internet applications. External hosting by such application service providers (ASPs) as IBM provides a low-cost, secure and reliable way for companies to deploy e-commerce enterprise applications without the need to purchase costly infrastructure. However, while designing software for applications that run on the servers of external hosts, performance may suffer if the data and the application reside at two different locations. In this paper, we provide a technique for improving the performance in such applications. This technique is implemented in large industrial software systems. We provide the software architecture and preliminary performance results.