Scale companies typically operate best with centralised IT structures.

The focus on common processes lends itself strongly to the the definition and implementation of "common systems". These lead directly to the availibility of “packeges solutions” which implicitly implement a standardised business process.

 The resulting standardisation of demand for IT services makes a strong centralised operations and support infrastructure both feasible and successful.

This centralised IT model is a logical evolution of the IT delivery structures of the 1970's and 80's which were primarily intended to optimise the use of high value IT assets. The procedural approaches to IT pioneered by scale organisations have, until recently been the basic paradigms used by the whole IT industry.

The economies of scale created by the adoption of common , shared business processes and the resulting ability to amortise the development costs of shared systems has, until very recently, almost imposed the common systems model on users as a consequence of the the economics of the supply side model.

Whatever technology platform is used, it is typically tightly defined by the central staff functions and implemented by replication across the operational units of the business. The technology platform for such organisations is that of thin clients where all activities and operations can be controlled from the centre.