Mission Critical

Derived from Military usage, the term is used to describe activities, processing, etc., which are deemed vital to the organisation's business success and, possibly, its very existence.

Some major applications are described ad being Mission Critical in the sense that, if the application fails, crashes, or is otherwise unavailable to the organisation, it will have a significant negative impact upon the business. Although the definition will vary from organisation to organisation, such applications include accounts/billing, customer balances, computer controlled machinery and production lines, JIT ordering, delivery scheduling, etc.