In ancient ages, people used papyrus and wood to maintain their customer information, and eventually, this changed to slate. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, kings used to take help from clerks (also known as Munim); these clerks were responsible for maintaining all the customer information on behalf of the king. From time to time, the clerks used to show this account information to the king. The problem with this system was that it was not secured; the clerk could easily manipulate the data for his benefit, and this may have caused losses to the king's business.
"Necessity is the mother of invention" – Plato
As the time passed, computers were invented, so people used them to save the customer information. In the late nineteenth century, the client-server model came into the picture, which introduced a centralized way of keeping record of the customer information.
In a client-server architecture, the end user acts as a client to the service provider; the service provider has its own centralized system known as the server. Once the user connects to the server, they get full rights to access their data. A few examples of CRM software based on the client-server model are Siebel, Oracle RightNow, and SugarCRM. The following is a client-server architecture diagram that describes this concept:
The following table describes the pros and cons of the client-server architecture:
There were certain problems with the maintenance and upgrading of the client-server model. So, in the twenty-first century, cloud computing came into the picture.
Cloud computing is the new concept in the computing era, in which customers don't have to worry about server maintenance, upgradation, and scalability. We can say that this is a subscription-based model where we can buy the number of licenses as required and start using the application. A few big names in cloud computing are Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com.
As per the preceding diagram, we see that we can connect with a large number of devices (mobiles, tablets, and workstations) via the same server. Customers only need a browser and an Internet connection to use their applications.
The following are the advantages of cloud computing:
No large startup fee
It's a subscription-based model
No buying, maintaining, and configuring hardware and software
We can scale up with the growth of our business
It's more secure and reliable than the client-server model
We can access it from anywhere, anytime, and via any device; we just need an Internet connection