You are in the middle of the system design phase for a project to develop a corporate intranet, and the project team is holding a planning meeting.

One of the system users on the project, who has said very little during the meeting, finally speaks up and says, “All you techies keep talking about the application architecture we’re going to be designing. I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.” Define and explain what application architecture is to the nontechnical system users in the group.