When the complexity of an application lies within how something is computed or how to orchestrate the computation of something, one talks about computational intensive applications.

Another form of application is a data intensive application. Of course an application can be both intensive in the computational sense as in the data sense.

Orchestration

Even though there is complexity in orchestrating the computation of something, the complexity could actually be more of a ‘distribution problem’ rather than a clear ‘computational’ problem.

Reference

Kleppmann, Martin, and Chris Riccomini. Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems. Second Edition, O’Reilly Media, 2026.