An Application is a program or group of programs designed to perform specific processing for end users. The end users can be human or machine.
An application can be deployed as a single process running on a single host, or as a distributed set of processes running on one or more hosts. For distributed applications the Turbonomic Supply Chain can include a Business Application entity, with underlying Business Transaction, Service, and Application Component entities. The application is ultimately hosted on one or more VMs or Containers.