What is an enterprise application?

An enterprise application is software that manages core business processes across an organization. Instead of serving a single person or small team like regular software, it helps different parts of a business secure and share information, coordinate tasks, and run core operations more smoothly. 

That might include functions like inventory tracking, customer data, payroll, or internal communication. Its goal is to automatically synchronize workflows across the business, eliminating the need to manually migrate data between disparate tools.

For most organizations, an enterprise application isn’t 1 giant system. It’s typically a mix of microservices, application programming interfaces (APIs), and databases that work together behind the scenes. Since these systems support a large number of users across different teams and functions, they need strong security and the ability to scale with demand. They also need a dependable application platform so development and operations teams can build, run, and manage them smoothly across cloud or on-premise environments.

Speed app development with Red Hat OpenShift

While enterprise applications handle wildly different jobs, they all share some common traits. Because these tools are used company-wide—and require close collaboration between developer, security, and operations teams—they can’t rely on a 1-size-fits-all framework. Instead, when organizations build enterprise software, they must customize specific dimensions to fit their unique requirements. 

Here are key characteristics of an enterprise application that set it apart from a standard business tool:

• Scalability: A standard application might only need to handle a few users at a time. An enterprise application must be able to simultaneously scale to support thousands of internal employees and external customers across different locations. This scalability allows organizations to flex their computing power to meet volatile business demands—such as a tax preparation application scaling to handle millions of simultaneous users during peak filing season without crashing. 
• Security and privacy: Because enterprise applications handle sensitive corporate data, financial records, and customer information, stringent security is crucial. They may require advanced data encryption and strict access controls so companies can regulate exactly who can view or modify existing data. 
• Task complexity: Enterprise applications don’t just store data; they actively manage highly complex, multistep processes across an organization. By embedding a company’s day-to-day business rules directly into the software, the applications automatically handle sequential tasks, like updating corporate accounting and inventory databases the moment a product leaves a warehouse.
• Ease of integration: An enterprise application rarely lives in isolation. It must be flexible enough to connect and share data with existing databases, traditional systems, and external partner tools, letting internal teams easily collaborate and share insights across a comprehensive set of common tools.
• Consistency and flexibility: Organizations must decide where these applications will physically live based on performance, infrastructure requirements, and data privacy concerns. Strong enterprise applications need a consistent application platform to run smoothly across on-premise, cloud, and edge environments. With this setup, IT teams keep full visibility and uniform security across all deployments.

The real value of enterprise applications comes from how they help large organizations work more efficiently. By connecting data, teams, and workflows, they cut down on duplicate work, increase visibility, and make everyday operations easier to manage.

Better connectivity and collaboration

When separate teams use their own tools and applications, they create isolated datasets that make it hard to exchange information across departments. A member of one team may need to manually duplicate data to share it with another team in a different tool, introducing opportunities for human error and taking up valuable time.

Enterprise software solves this problem by connecting different business functions through a centralized application or application platform. This approach supports collaboration by giving all teams automatic access to data and full visibility from the start of a project. 

Increased efficiency

Enterprise applications automate many manual processes that typically slow teams down. They’re also better at optimizing resource allocation, like scaling software up or down based on need. Both automation and the ability to optimize help companies get tasks done faster and with reduced human error. This operational efficiency lets organizations reclaim time spent on manual data tracking, freeing employees to focus on high-priority work.

Reduced costs

The addition of automation and improvements in resource allocation helps lower costs by minimizing human error and reducing digital infrastructure to only what the company needs. Long-term cost saving also comes from reducing a company’s software footprint. By using a single enterprise application, a business can eliminate licenses for multiple, overlapping tools.

Increased security

Unlike standard software, enterprise applications include features designed to protect sensitive company or customer data and meet regulatory compliance requirements. They include built-in capabilities like automated auditing and access controls, as well as continuous code scanning to catch software vulnerabilities and data leaks before they cause a breach. 

Improved data management

Enterprise applications pull information into a unified data repository, creating a single source of truth that processes real-time data from every corner of the business. By clearly defining these data requirements from the start, organizations ensure their information remains clean and standardized across different departments. Having this reliable data in a single location gives businesses the exact tools they need for more accurate business intelligence, advanced analytics, and faster strategic decision-making.

In the past, connecting separate business functions required custom-built middleware or heavy data pipelines to force separate systems to talk to each other. Today, the focus has shifted toward modular architectures that make integration more flexible—and much simpler.

Microservices

Traditionally, an enterprise application was written as 1 massive program. If developers wanted to update a minor feature in 1 part of the software (like a payroll module), they had to update and redeploy the entire application. If a single component broke, the whole application could crash.

To avoid this challenge, modern teams use a microservices architecture. Instead of building 1 massive program, developers break the application into a collection of smaller, independent services that each handle a single job. These services communicate with each other automatically using APIs. Because each service is independent, teams can update or fix individual parts of the application without taking the entire system offline.

Containers

Once an application is broken down into independent microservices, development and operations teams face a new challenge: making sure all those individual pieces run consistently across different environments. An application might work perfectly on a developer’s laptop but fail when deployed to an on-premise server or public cloud.

To solve this problem, organizations use containers. While microservices determine how an application's components are built, containers determine how they are packaged and deployed. A container isolates a single service and all the exact configuration files it needs to run into a lightweight bundle. Because the containerized application carries its entire environment with it, it runs exactly the same way regardless of the underlying infrastructure or hardware.

Application platforms

While containers solve the problem of environment consistency, managing hundreds or thousands of them across a mix of public and private clouds introduces significant operational complexity. Basic container orchestration layers like Kubernetes help automate deployment, but they are only 1 piece of a much larger cloud-native ecosystem.

This is why choosing a comprehensive application platform is critical. An application platform ties together container orchestration with the broader ecosystem of developer tools, automated pipelines, and continuous security monitoring. It translates raw infrastructure into a unified environment: Developers get a reliable place to build and iterate on their services, while operations teams get a single dashboard to deploy, secure, and scale the entire enterprise application across any cloud.

See how Exolgan sped app development with Red Hat OpenShift

Enterprise applications support many different areas of a business, from finance and operations to customer management and employee training. The exact use depends on what the organization needs, but the main goal is usually the same: to keep important work connected and easier to manage on a daily basis. 

• Enterprise resource planning (ERP): An ERP system acts as the operational spine of a company. It links core processes like product manufacturing, global supply chain tracking, order processing, and corporate accounting into a single system so leadership has an accurate view of the business. 
• Customer relationship management (CRM): CRM platforms organize all customer-facing information. They track sales leads, manage client accounts, store interaction histories, and organize customer support tickets so teams can provide consistent service. 
• Human capital management (HCM): These systems manage workforce operations. They automate company-wide payroll, track employee benefits, manage internal team structures, and streamline the recruitment and hiring process. 
• Supply chain management (SCM): SCM software coordinates the flow of raw materials and finished goods. It helps companies handle procurement, manage warehouse storage levels, and optimize shipping logistics to ensure products get to customers efficiently. And just as companies must protect these physical goods, they must also secure their software supply chains to stop vulnerabilities from compromising their applications.
• Business intelligence (BI) and analytics: BI applications turn raw data from across a company into clear insights for strategic decision-making. They pull information from massive storage repositories like data lakes or data warehouses. Depending on the business need, they might use real-time data processing engines to instantly analyze information (like flagging an uncharacteristic financial transaction) or rely on batch processing to compile massive volumes of data at scheduled times (like generating global sales reports at the end of every week). 

Despite their contribution to smoother, more efficient business operations, deploying enterprise applications can present challenges:

• Connecting new systems to existing tools: Most organizations rely on both modern, cloud-native applications and traditional software, databases, and services. They need to use APIs, middleware, or custom tools to integrate new applications with older systems.
• Supporting user adoption: Modernizing core software often means updating long-standing business habits. To ensure smooth adoption, companies need to invest in effective onboarding programs that help employees feel confident using new tools, ensuring the business realizes the full value of its investment.
• Migrating data: When an organization adopts a new enterprise application, the application often needs to access large amounts of data in the new environment. The process can be difficult if data is incomplete, inconsistent, or stored in different formats. Teams need to clean, organize, and verify data so the new application has the information it needs to do its job correctly.
• Managing cost and complexity: Enterprise applications can be expensive to build, customize, and maintain. Successful implementation involves thorough planning that considers user training, integration, security, and ongoing updates. Poor planning can quickly increase costs and delay the benefits the system is supposed to deliver.
• Maintaining security and compliance: Because enterprise applications store sensitive business information and customer data, they need strong security controls from the beginning. This includes access management, encryption, monitoring, and policies that help the company stay aligned with internal requirements and external regulations.

Building and managing enterprise applications introduces significant structural complexity, especially when the microservices that make up an application span a mix of datacenters and cloud environments. Red Hat® OpenShift® removes this friction by offering a comprehensive application platform with flexible deployment and consumption options. With Red Hat OpenShift, you can quickly build, run, and deploy applications anywhere—while getting a consistent way to manage the entire application environment.

By delivering a consistent, streamlined, and automated experience, Red Hat OpenShift helps both development and operations teams better navigate these complex environments. It provides a developer toolset that simplifies daily workflows, allowing your teams to spend less time managing underlying infrastructure and more time focusing on innovation. With the right tools and platform management in place, organizations can accelerate the entire solution lifecycle—helping you reduce operational costs while quickly delivering the high-performing applications your business demands.

Explore the 5 pillars of a modern application platform