Increasing power to the user

As computing systems have become faster, cheaper, and more pervasive, systems have increased not only in power, but also in capabilities empowering the user.

IIA systems continue these trends, providing more effective user interactivity, use of computing power, event and message handling, and user personalization, while retaining the Web's ease of deployment:

Need	Mainframe	Desktop	Client-Server	Web	IIA
User interactivity	Limited: command-line interfaces.	High: multiple windows, drag-and-drop, point-and-click	Similar to Desktop	Medium low: point-and-click, form fill-in; Web latency problems.	Very high: full power of desktop/client server interfaces
Effective use of computing power	Limited: only displays data sent from mainframe	High: real-time computation, rich information visualization possible	High: Similar to Desktop, plus access to servers	Low: renders pages sent from server	Very high: full access to client and server resources.
User personalization	None	Limited install-time customization.	Similar to Desktop	Server can personalize content.	Client and server can personalize content and application components.
Event and message handling	None: almost all resources are on the mainframe.	Little potential with resources still largely centralized.	Good capabilities, used in focused ways.	Weak: clients can make only limited requests.	Very high potential, well supported by Internet Middleware.
Development support	Basic building blocks and development tools.	Good: medium-power non-standard APIs; good tools.	Medium-high-power APIs; very good tools.	Limited by power of HTML and scripting; excellent backend tools; painful to debug Web pages.	Very high potential; tools at early stage.
Software deployment	Straightforward, supported by basic tools.	Moderately difficult for IT to maintain consistent, effective systems across the enterprise.	>Similar to Desktop	Very easy: user always gets latest software; some browser compatibility issues.	Similar to Web