This paper gives an interesting case study review of a bank’s evolvement into distributed processing and a return to a more centralized approach. There is a brief description of the various distributed configurations, such as centralized, star, fully connected, and hybrid. The evolution of the bank’s network is illustrated with these network configurations.

This is a well-written paper aimed at the management level. It would make a good “survey” type document to introduce management to distributed processing, as well as some pros and cons of various implementations.