ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

IBM Systems Application Architecture

So imagine you are playing with building blocks. You have different shapes and sizes of blocks that you can use to build different things like houses or towers.

Now imagine that there are different people who want to build things using these building blocks, but they all have different ideas about what they want to build and how they want to build it. This is kind of like how different companies want to write software programs, but they all have different ideas about how to do it and what they want the program to do.

IBM Systems Application Architecture (SAA) is like a set of instructions or rules that everyone has to follow when they build their software programs. These rules make sure that the different programs can work together and communicate with each other, even if they were built by different companies or people.

So, just like how you have to follow the building block instructions to build something that will fit with other blocks and structures, software developers have to follow the rules of SAA to build programs that will work well with other programs in the same system.

By following these rules, different software programs can talk to each other and work together smoothly, kind of like how all the different parts of a big machine work together to do a job. And that's why SAA is important for making sure that big systems with lots of different programs can work well together.