Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Understanding the Difference between Cloud Apps and Web Apps

 The present evolution in web concepts and web technology has led humanity and civilization to the conception of cloud based web application development. Today, many people ask if the terms cloud app and web app are different or not. And if yes, what could be the difference. Though these terms sound very similar, they are not. Yet, the difference between the cloud app and a web app remain very blurry. Nevertheless, there are noteworthy differences, as cloud based applications are now being used for leveraging richer user customization experience and seamless integration.

From the web app to the cloud app, web application development has certainly come of age. Today, open source development and other concepts such as enterprise web solutions have helped many a web design agency to develop the most complex and intuitive apps for businesses and organizations around the globe. The key point with a cloud app is that it is an evolved web app.  A cloud app can be equally used to access to access online services over the Internet, just as in the case of web apps. However, it is not exclusively dependent on web browsers to work. 

Cloud Based Software Application Development



In the case of a cloud app, data is stored in a cloud or a cloud-like infrastructure and can be cached locally for use in a full-offline mode. Cloud apps can be used from the web browser and/or custom built apps that are installed on Internet connected devices such as desktops and mobile phones. It can be also used to access a wider range of services such as on-demand computing and application development platforms. A few common examples of cloud apps are Salesforce, Netsuite, and Zoho.com and also include web mail such as Google and Yahoo, as these also depend on cloud technology for their performance.

Web Application Development






On the contrary, web apps are almost exclusively designed to be used from a web browser. A typical web app is a combination of server-side script (ASP, PHP etc) and client-side script (HTML, JavaScript and Adobe Flash), which are commonly used for web application development. Hence, cloud apps are web apps, but not all web apps are cloud apps unless they display true-multi tenancy to support various requirements and customer needs. Finally web apps need to display support for virtualization technology, else they need to be reengineered for this purpose.

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