Web Applications
The Web is a huge application platform that enables you to deliver software without distributing code.
Web-based applications are the cornerstone of software as a service (SAAS) paradigm. Instead of installing programs to every user, and then figuring out ways to update them and protect against piracy, we design and implement the functionality to be used through browser.
The system stays completely at our customer’s control on the server side. Everyone’s software can be upgraded instantly, nobody can copy or distribute the software as it is only present on the customer’s server and not the users computer. The hosting costs are minimal for applications that are not dealing with excessive amounts of data, such as online videos or music.
As the software is provided as a service, it can be also invoiced as a service. Instead of charging a one-time fee, our customers can select the proper monetisation mechanism from a wide variety of choices. Some parts of the system can be free for everyone, and for others they charge for monthly, yearly or based on usage.
Communities and Third Parties
The benefits of using the web as an application platform become at least two-fold when there are community features or other user-to-user interaction in the system. There is no need to build specific protocols between client programs and centralised servers; everything happens inside the server cluster.
Integration with other web applications is straightforward, too. In the simplest case, the integration happens on an HTML and JavaScript level, and usually using well-defined application programming interfaces (API) provided by the other parties.
Proper use of APIs in the system allows others to add value by creating complementary solutions that are completely or partially dependant on our customer’s system. If a need arose for developing a specific client software, the same API would be reused — thus reducing complexity in systems with multiple user interfaces.
Scalability
When the application and its data model are designed right, our customers can add capacity with new hardware. They may start out modestly, and then add both fault tolerance and high availability later on. New features can be implemented, tested and deployed in a staging environment that is used by testers or friendly users. After they are satisfied with the results, the system is released into the production environment.