Web-based business services

Web-based business services are online services that render various functions like data storage, processing, sharing of information and so on using the world wide web. The service may be hosted in a web-based server or various servers across the globe. A user can access these services using a login and password. Web-based business services play a significant part in today’s digital world.

Applications for Individuals

Email systems, social media websites, data storage applications are some common web apps used by individuals. Examples include Dropbox, Gmail, Facebook and so on.

Applications for Small and Medium Businesses

Cloud applications have proven to be a boon to small and medium businesses that do not have the sufficient resources or funds to expand their services. Custom applications for email, billing, HR and inventory management are widely adopted by small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) across the world.

A decade ago, enterprises were investing in Microsoft Office. They had to physically purchase the DVD containing the MS-Office Enterprise Edition installation files. Then they needed to install it, either in individual computers based on the requirements or they install it in a centralized server so that all the networked computers could access it. IT departments had to undergo lot of pain to install MS-Office to thousands of computers across the organisation, maintain them well, troubleshoot them when they crashed and upgrade whenever there was a new version of MS-Office available in the market. A huge chunk of their time, efforts and resources went into deploying, managing and maintaining the MS-Office packages.

But these days, it has become much easier to work on documents, presentations and worksheets without the need to undergo such pain. Thanks to Google Docs, the user just needs to register and have login id and password to access a slew of services like Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Forms etc.

There is no need to install, manage or upgrade each time a new version is released. It is completely managed by Google. As and when there is an upgrade, all the users can able to access the additional features at a stretch – when they login the next time. That is how easy it is.

Applications for Enterprises

As organisations grow, they tend to lose their agility and succumb to the ordeal of maintaining legacy applications and huge data centers. With the advent of cloud computing, large enterprises become flexible, save costs and put themselves in a better position for innovation. ERP systems, CRMs and IT service management applications are some manifestations of the cloud in large organisations.

A classic example would be of Ramco Ondemand ERP solutions. Earlier, Ramco was offering on-premises ERP earlier for a lot of sectors. The organisation had to purchase the whole version and install it in their centralised server - to make it available to the whole organisation. It involved a lot of resources including investments, manpower, huge storage and servers with good computing capacity. Then, Ramco moved to the cloud and started offering Ramco Ondemand ERP solutions. This enabled organisations to just subscribe to Ramco and obtain a login id and password. All they needed to do was to open a web browser, enter the login credentials and they could access the complete software over cloud. All updates to the ERP application, platform, infrastructure were managed by Ramco and its vendors.