Business firms have been expressing a strong interest in an effective structure of computing resources. In this respect previous studies provide some guidelines about the deployment of hardware, but the question of which information systems (IS) would be run under the dispersed hardware is still unanswered. The main purpose of the study is to analyze the relationship between various IS characteristics and the distribution of IS. The IS characteristics studied in this research include the usage frequency of IS in a dispersed plant, the currency of information required by the headquarter, the data volume processed in the plant, the relatedness of IS with other information systems in the plant. The survey was performed over the domestic, large manufacturing firms. The most noticeable finding is that the more the updated information is required in the headquarter, or the more related IS is to other information systems in the plant, the more IS is distributed.