But...

the headaches for the quick-and-dirty solution will raise their ugly heads when it comes time to do maintenance on the solution. Too many companies don't understand this concept.

>I agree, as above, that it may depend on the application. However I don't think that designing in the separation is a major factor in development costs.
>I also don't think that the size of the business is the factor here - it's the size of the application. A small business that invests heavily in a large application with tightly-coupled design is likely to have more headaches than a big business using a simple quick-and-dirty solution to a simple problem.....