Various Types of Software Applications

The software acts as an instructor. It tells the computer what action to perform. To do various tasks effectively, you require the support of software.

This blog can help you understand more about the types of software applications used in common.

What is Software?

Software tells a computer what needs to be done. Software is a set of the programs,  processes, and procedures of the operation of a computer. 

The set of instructions and information that guides computer hardware to perform any task is called software. 

Types of Softwares

You can’t work without software. Every physical device can work only with the help of types of software, perfect software in place. 

There are two categories of Softwares,  namely:

System Softwares

System software can help you control the internal functions of a device,  through an Operating System. It can also manage the processing unit and your output devices.

System software is a type of computer program which enables you to run the application programs and the hardware of your computer. 

This software is mainly designed to create an interface between the end-user and the hardware. 

Types of System Softwares

Operating systems

Operating systems are the backbone of computer functioning. It is essential to run the utilities and the application programs on your computer. Windows OS is the major source of OS that is installed in computers. 

Device drivers

A device driver is a computer program that can create an interface to the hardware,  to enable interaction with them. It can guide the OS and the other software in how to behave with the hardware devices. 

Programming Language Translators

It helps to convert the high-level language into machine-understandable form. The program written in a source code is converted to machine code with the help of translators. It also helps in error identification during the translation process. 

Firmwares

This is generally programmed into a computer’s hardware at the manufacturing stage itself. It is used to run the software programs in the hardware devices. 

Embedded systems,  mobile phones and computer peripherals are all examples of devices having firmware. 

Utilities

Additional software included in a computer to improve its functionality are called utilities. 

The utility can be described as a tiny program that can provide some additional features beyond the capability of an Operating System. Antivirus and Backup are examples of Utility software. 

Application Softwares

Also called Application Program, it refers to a computer program that lets you do single or multiple tasks on the system. 

The software helps to manage visuals,  information, data,  figures, and resources together. Application software can let you access specific information based upon the requirements. 

Types of Application Softwares

Sales & Marketing Software:

Sales and marketing automation software help you scale your business by automating the time-consuming and administrative parts of the sales and marketing processes – like sending thousands of emails to customers or following up with hundreds of prospects with personalized communication. 

Sales automation tools help salespeople save an enormous amount of time by automating the administrative tasks in their sales process, and help them do personalized yet large-scale outreach via emails, calls, SMS, and even LinkedIn. 

Marketing automation, too, does the same with marketing tasks. Using this type of application software can help you scale your email campaigns, boost the growth of your social media channels, track customers’ journeys and their behaviour so you can engage them with more relevant content.

Content Access Softwares:

Content access software is commonly used to access content to meet the needs of users for web content and digital entertainment. 

Normally,  the editing is not enabled in the accessed content,  but certain type of application software can help to work on it too. 

Information worker softwares:

This type of application software allows you to make and manage the data, mainly for individual projects. It includes documentation, time and resource management, analytical tools, and so on. 

Enterprise softwares:

Unlike information worker software, enterprise software can help to meet the demands of an entire organization. These are the applications and programs used by the firms to meet their operational needs. 

Presentation softwares:

Presentation software, also known as the Presentation program is a type of application software that can let you present your ideas and thoughts with good clarity through visual data presentation. 

With presentation software, you can frame your ideas and design them using various tools. It can also be used to create professional presentations and multimedia presentations.

Your slide can be made more visually pleasing and informative by adding text, images, graphics, and videos. PowerPoint is an example of presentation software that is widely used.

It has the following components:

Web browsers: 

A web browser is another type of software application that can help you get access to the website and view its information. You can use them to search the Internet to locate and get data online.

When you want to retrieve information in a webpage from a website, the web browser collects that specific information from the server and shows the page for your convenience. 

In this way, it links a computer and user to the available resources on the web that isn’t password protected. Google Chrome, and Internet Explorer, are common examples of popular web browsers.

Multimedia softwares: 

Multimedia software can help you to work with the images. You can make images,  record audio and build video files. 

The field of animations, image or video editing, and graphics make use of this software. The media player and the music player are examples of such software. 

Graphics softwares: 

This software deals with the process involved in editing or modifying the graphics. It can be either visual information or images. 

Adobe Photoshop and CorelDRAW are the ideal examples for the graphics software for working with different types of graphic design. Graphics software includes illustration and picture editing software. 

Education and reference softwares:

This type of application software is made to let you learn a typical subject or a topic. This is commonly used for educational purposes and hence also called academic software. 

There is much software available for tutorials, training, and educating the learners. Google Classroom and EdX are the best examples of educational software delivering values to learners. 

Spreadsheet softwares:

Spreadsheet software is an advantage if you deal with calculations. Here,  the data is entered and stored in tables. You can make use of cells to define the various fields like text,  name,  number, year,  date, etc. 

Hence, it makes it easy for your users to perform calculations easily with the help of functions and formulas. The best spreadsheet software commonly used is Microsoft Excel.

Database softwares: 

With Database software, you can create a database easily. You can also store, manage and modify the information in the database without much effort. 

The Database Management System or DBMS is responsible for collecting,  managing and storing your data. 

You are also open to retrieving the data quickly, making changes, and then storing them back after it. 

Knack,  MySQL, Microsoft SQL are some examples of well-known databases.

Word processing softwares:

A word processing software lets you format the text.  It also helps you to modify the text,  making documents,  letters or any other professional content. 

It helps you add new features to your text document and includes font, style,  thesaurus,  graphs, charts and other options to make your document look perfect. 

You may also use the Grammar and spell-check features for making your documents grammatically correct. 

Simulation softwares: 

You are probably in need of simulation software if you are in the field of engineering, testing,  gaming or education and more. 

You can use this software when it is dangerous and not an acceptable idea to work directly on the exact system. 

Effective simulation can help you to learn and observe a process, an operation or a method without actually going through its operation. 

You can always make use of the simulation software for weather forecast,  deep learning,  robotics,  scientific and data analysis techniques etc. 

You can benefit from the simulation software in certain situations where the real machines can’t be operated all of a sudden with no training methods. 

Instead,  the simulation software enables you to understand and get familiarized with the models before getting the opportunity to handle the original machinery. 

Classification based on Availability and Shareability :

Freewares:

Software available for free is ideally freeware. You can quickly and effectively make use of these free software available on the Internet. 

But this software does not let you make changes for it or let you charge anything for its distribution. You cannot alter or make any modifications to the software. 

Adobe Reader and Skype are the best examples of freeware. 

Sharewares:

Shareware software is provided to the users for trial. This trial generally lasts for a stipulated time in a limited offer. 

To continue with the use of this software after the trial,  you will have to pay a charge. This is distributed freely to the users on a trial basis, usually with a limited-time offer.

The users are expected to pay if they want to continue to use the software. Some examples of shareware are WinZip and Adobe Acrobat.

After getting access to the source code, you can make copies,  and also share them. WinZip, WinRAR,  AnyDVD, and Adobe Acrobat are some popular examples of shareware. 

Open source softwares:

Open-source software works with good source code. 

The source code can help you modify and edit the software, easily remove errors or add extra features to your software. Free and paid versions of open source software are available. 

Some examples of Open-source software include Thunderbird email client and Apache HTTP Web server. 

Closed source softwares:

The closed source software applications are commonly used. These are protected and the source code is reserved with intellectual property rights. This software is not free and offers a restricted use.

Conclusion

Software plays a crucial role in maintaining and managing the device and its operations. Without software,  it is impossible to operate and control your hardware. 

There are many types of application software available that meet different user requirements. These can help to make your processes and operations easy and smooth. 

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