Overview
Traditionally, software applications run on top of a general-purpose operating system, which uses the hardware resources of the computer (primarily memory, disk storage, processing power, and networking bandwidth) to meet the computing needs of the user. The main issue with the traditional model is related to complexity. It is complex to integrate the operating system and applications with a hardware platform, and complex to support it afterwards.
By tightly constraining the variations of the hardware and software, the appliance becomes easily deployable, and can be used without nearly as wide (or deep) IT knowledge. As importantly, when problems and errors appear, the supporting staff very rarely needs to explore them deeply and to understand the matter thoroughly. The staff needs merely training on the appliance management software to be able to resolve most of problems.
In all forms of the computer appliance model, customers benefit from easy operations. The appliance has exactly one combination of hardware and operating system and application software, which has been pre-installed at the factory. This prevents customers from needing to perform complex integration work, and dramatically simplifies troubleshooting. In fact, this "turnkey operation" characteristic is the driving benefit that customers seek when purchasing appliances.
To be considered an appliance, the (hardware) device needs to be integrated with software, and both are supplied as a package. This distinguishes appliances from "home grown" solutions, or solutions requiring complex implementations (by integrators or Value-added resellers (VARs)).
The appliance approach helps to decouple the various systems and applications, for example in the data center. Once a resource is decoupled, in theory it can be also centralized to become shared among many systems, centrally managed and optimized, all without requiring changes to any other system.
Read more about this topic: Computer Appliance