Outside of the tech world, the word middleware is not so important as well. But four decades ago few visionaries, scholars invented the term that is still so used and so little known in the IT market. The introduction took place in the area of distributed systems and, since then, all that lies between the operating system and the application layer is considered middleware. What you see today is a multitude of companies large and medium – some even well known – taking advantage of the features and functionality that the middleware can provide. Many even invest in the dark, without knowing exactly what it is.

With the advent of the web, increasingly the architecture of ‘client-server’ was becoming obsolete, many leading software companies and developers used to make their applications more globalized and codes lighter. With so many products that have been migrating to the ‘Tier III’ architecture (presentation, application and data in data center or cloud hosting India) and using the middleware. Who can imagine a ecommerce site with a single code, connecting to databases, managing logins, validating cards and many other features. It would be complete chaos!

The middleware functionality centralizes the business and take the codes of applications tasks, access the peripheral components of the environment, such as database, email, etc.. Were it not for middleware, many services would be slow, unsafe and impractical, frustrating most WebShoppers – Profile growing at least 30% a year – and even those internet users who tend to vote in reality shows, generating thousands of clicks per minute.

Since 1995, software manufacturers aggressively promote a contest to see who has the middleware faster, has more features and dominating the web. Technology giants invest millions of dollars in research and acquisitions of competitors to enrich their software brands. Thus, the middleware has left a long time to be a simple application container to become the brain of valuable world’s leading organizations, accessing and being accessed by everyone within each company, regardless of size.

Just to illustrate, when working with a flag of food cards, once stopped the IT environment for migrating a large block of cards. Whenever it was necessary, transactions entered in a mode called stand-in , which limits the value of the cards to use for normalization. Incredible as it may seem, this routine action generated a strong impact on my own family, as my parents were unable to make a purchase high value in the supermarket that same time interval. All my fault! This episode even showed me how the world depends on the use of middleware and how companies distributed service providers should be cautious when mounting the IT infrastructure. After all, from a simple supermarket purchase to the energy supply of a neighborhood or town depend on this layer technology as used and so little known.