The UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer components are distributed across three physical tiers: the Web Service, the Interview Service, and the Data Service.

Typical system configurations are as follows:

Companies that are just starting Web interviewing or that carry out a limited number of small surveys each year can run all three tiers on a single computer, optionally with a firewall installed between the server and the internet. Scriptwriters can work offline using desktop applications installed directly on their PCs, or they can connect to the server via their browser and work in UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer - Server Admin.

For a small fault-tolerant system, three computers can be used. Two of these computers host both the Web Service and the Interview Service, providing fault tolerance for both services. The third computer hosts the Data Service. This computer can also be used to provide other database services outside of UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer, and a firewall can be installed between this computer and the others. The following illustration shows the top level Web and Interview components hosted across two computers:

When a large fault-tolerant system is required, multiple computers can host each of the three tiers. Splitting the Web service from the Interview Service allows the Interview Service to run on computers with smaller amounts of disk space but larger amounts of memory and processing power. For security, the computers hosting the Data Service and, optionally, the Interview Service, can be placed behind a firewall.

A typical UNICOM Intelligence clustered environment could resemble the following.