Websites, Software as a Service (SaaS), Mobile Apps, servers, networking, and more. With all the different types of technology and services that exist how do you know, ‘What is Web Application Development’ and ‘Why would I need to use it’. Let’s take a few steps back before moving forward.
Before the emergence of cloud services, businesses would (and still) use software. Businesses had to physically install these programs on their servers and/or each individual computer. These could be long term licenses, outright purchases of software, or custom solutions which were for that business. However, anytime there was a new upgrade they had to mundanely install the software on each computer again.
With the emergence and growth of cloud services, it has introduced the ability to host these programs on cloud servers. This allowed users to access the solution via the internet. Businesses and application developers use the help of the cloud services to scale their abilities and reach with web applications.
What exactly is a web app? A web application is a client-server computer program which the client (including the user interface and client-side logic) runs in a web browser. In plain English, it’s any tool that you access via the internet in order to complete a process. For example, it could be your email, your company’s analytics program or logistics system, an e-commerce platform and more!
Website vs. Web Application
What it is, it is not is a website. A website is simply a stagnant web page that offers content and information about a service that is offered; however, it is not the actual service nor does functionality exist.
Currently, the SaaS market is a projected to be a 185.5 billion dollar industry by 2024. Many of the SaaS platforms will be fully web applications or at least have a major component that is. The time that you would leverage an existing web application or build a custom one, is when you have created a new idea, or are looking for ways to improve your business while having the ability to access the information from anywhere with a laptop and internet connection.
Additional Fun Facts:
- Web applications can be made to be mobile responsive. This does not mean they are mobile applications, they are simply the web app that they can access via a web browser on their mobile device.
- Not all mobile applications are what they seem! Many mobile apps are web apps that are disguised as a mobile app. Using tools like Django and Xamarin, developers are able to create hybrid mobile apps using the existing web app to quickly deploy apps to both iOS and Android at the same time!
Contact Grata for your own Custom Web Application Development here