Which of the following is characteristic of a traditional systems development environment?

The characteristic that many applications require substantial desktop computing power and resources accurately reflects aspects of a traditional systems development environment. In traditional setups, applications are often designed to run on local machines, which necessitates a considerable amount of processing power and memory available on the user's desktop.

This context is critical as it outlines how early systems were built to operate on specific hardware configurations, often limiting their ability to perform optimally without significant desktop resources. The user experience and system functionality were tightly coupled with the capabilities of the users' desktop machines.

The other options, while describing modern trends in computing, do not accurately represent traditional systems development environments. For instance, minimal desktop computing resources and dependency on cloud services are more representative of contemporary, highly distributed systems where the processing is often offloaded to servers or cloud architectures. Additionally, focusing solely on web development does not encompass the broader scope of traditional systems, which included a variety of application types beyond just web-based interfaces.