• Centralized Processing :
- Centralized Processing are Processing that use client/server architecture where one or more client nodes are directly connected to a central server. This is the most commonly used type of Processing in many organizations where client sends a request to a company server and receives the response.
Example :– Consider a massive server to which we send our requests and the server responds with the article that we requested. Suppose we enter the search term ‘junk food’ in the Wikipedia search bar. This search term is sent as a request to the Wikipedia servers (mostly located in Virginia, U.S.A) which then responds back with the articles based on relevance. In this situation, we are the client node, Wikipedia servers are central server.

• Characteristics of Centralized Processing 
- Presence of a global clock: As the entire Processing consists of a central node (a server/ a master) and many client nodes (a computer/ a slave), all client nodes sync up with the global clock (the clock of the central node).
- One single central unit: One single central unit which serves/coordinates all the other nodes in the Processing.
- Dependent failure of components: Central node failure causes entire processing to fail. This makes sense because when the server is down, no other entity is there to send/receive response/requests.

• Components of Centralized Processing
- Node (Computer, Mobile, etc.).
- Server.
- Communication link (Cables, Wi-Fi, etc.).

• Advantages of Centralized Processing 
- Easy to physically secure. It is easy to secure and service the server and client nodes by virtue of their location
- Dedicated resources (memory, CPU cores, etc.)
- More cost efficient for small Processing up to a certain limit – As the central Processing take less funds to set up, they have an edge when small Processing have to be built
- Quick updates are possible. Only one machine to update.
- Easy detachment of a node from the Processing. Just remove the connection of the client node from the server.

• Disadvantages of Centralized Processing 
- Highly dependent on the network connectivity. Processing can fail if the nodes lose connectivity as there is only one central node.
- Less possibility of data backup. If the server node fails and there is no backup, you lose the data straight away
- Difficult server maintenance. There is only one server node and due to availability reasons, it is inefficient and unprofessional to take the server down for maintenance. So, updates have to be done quickly which is difficult and the Processing could break.

• Applications of Centralized Processing 
- Data analysis: Easy to do data analysis when all the data is in one place and available for analysis
- Personal computing

• Organizations Using 
National Informatics Center (India), IBM