SPINEware – a framework for user-oriented and tailorable metacomputers

Computing networks in enterprises are rapidly growing not only in capacity but also in complexity. The users usually get faced with networking details and with a variety of heterogeneous computing systems. In the present paper, we present SPINEware as a facility for reducing the complexity of computer network usage. SPINEware is a facility that supports the development of working environments on top of existing computer networks. Such working environment reveals itself to the user as a powerful and easy-to-use single application environment – a metacomputer – providing uniform and network-transparent access to the resources and applications available from the computer network. To further reduce the complexity, SPINEware-based metacomputers may be tailored for particular end users and application areas.