Scroll to The history of cloud applications
Online today, everything worth talking about is in the cloud. Why? Because it is a place where applications, websites and anything else with a hunger for resources can go to thrive.
There are many hosting options for businesses today so why is hosting in the cloud an advantage?
Put simply, if giving website users up to the minute, real-time information there is no better place to be.
Hosting an application in the Cloud means you have the benefit of growing your business online without the worry of running out of resources.
Your idea could benefit from our expertise
Contact us today for an informal chat.
Scalability
When thinking about scalability in ‘real world’ terms, to scale or grow a business ‘offline’ would probably mean moving to new premises or hiring in new staff.
Online scaling is much harder.
If your web application suddenly saw rapid growth and your web resources were running out, the conventional method would be to buy a bigger server – big enough to cater for your newly acquired visitors.
With the dawn of the Cloud era, working in this way is no longer viable. The time it takes to create a server that matches your current settings and make the move across can be time consuming and costly.
The Cloud solves these problems by allowing businesses to increase or decrease resources on an as needed basis.
What is possible from a cloud application perspective?
One form of cloud application for business is SaaS – meaning Software as a Service. This kind of web app. has huge benefits (salesforce.com) for business. The more people buying through them means lots more revenue for the business. Real simple.
More and more are we seeing another great form of cloud application. The data centric website.
Data centric cloud applications often give users up to the minute information about the sites topic of interest, just like Hailo for the commuter or AirBnB for the adventurous traveller. These kind of applications are commonly more complex to monetise over SaaS but still, there are some great ideas being thought up on a day-to-day basis and some are set to revolutionise the way in which people live their lives.
Use case – Price My Car
A life changing application? Maybe not but one that excellently builds a bridge between automotive buyer and seller.
In early 2014 My Website Solutions built a conceptual SaaS application in the Cloud that can service businesses in the second hand car industry.
Individuals use the application to sell their cars.
Main features
Price My Car serves as a ‘buyer agent’ and introduces people selling second hand cars to dealerships that want to buy them. When a seller tells a dealership they are selling a car the application uses external data sources to gather information about the sellers car.
Using external data we are able to answer many questions including:
- Are the details for the car valid?
- How much is the car worth?
- Does the vehicle have outstanding finance?, and much more
Once data checks are complete the application sends a notification and report to the dealership. If the car is of interest the dealership can decide to contact the seller.
- There are 2 main user types for the app:
- Dealerships – paid account with varying levels of payment plans
- Sellers – free
- A Dealership can customise the interface to match their web presence
- Dealerships choose feature needs from a three tiered price plan
- Dealerships pay each time a seller submits a car for sale
- For marketing, the web application connects to many social channels
This kind of SaaS app. works extremely well in the Cloud because there are potentially millions of people worldwide that could use and benefit from it.
If the application all of a sudden saw rapid use growth – maybe due to wide acceptance via social sharing – being in the Cloud means scaling for an increase in resources would be a simple task.
Your idea could benefit from our expertise
Contact us today for an informal chat.
The history behind the Cloud
The concept of the cloud was discovered as early as the 1960’s when American Psychologist and Computer Scientist, Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider had a vision. His vision was that everyone around the world would be interconnected and accessing programs and data from anywhere. Whilst the technology wasn’t clear at that time his vision sounded very much like what the Cloud is today.
Since the late 1990’s hosting providers had the ability to increase web space and resources by simply adjusting configuration values. Over recent years this technology has been deployed on a massive scale.
The first company to use web services in this way was Salesforce.com back in 1999. They revolutionised the way in which enterprise applications were delivered to clients; using a simple website and logging in through a browser. Previously business tools were mainly distributed as software applications on CD for installation on office computers.
Shortly after in 2002 Amazon launched Web Services which gave users access to cloud based products for storage and other computer related services. Just 4 years later Amazon developed its Elastic Compute Cloud (abbreviated to EC2) which was a commercial service for individuals and small businesses to host websites and other computer applications.