With huge advancements in technology in recent years, many businesses are looking to automate many aspects of their operations to become more efficient and benefit from increased cost, time, and manpower savings. One such form of automation is web automation, where software robots perform predefined actions and processes on a web browser or web application, such as visiting websites and gathering data from them, a process known as web scraping.
In web scraping, robots are programmed to extract data from web pages, as well as reorganize and store that data in a way that is useful for businesses. This data may include contact information of potential leads, commodity prices, product reviews, weather data, and many more. Traditionally, businesses employed multiple people to gather this data, but the repetitive nature of this task introduces the element of human error, such as data duplicates or missed tasks, which impact productivity.
Used ethically, web automation presents huge benefits to businesses. However, owners of websites often do not want bots “snooping around” on their websites for bandwidth and data security concerns, so they employ various programs to filter out and block all web automation bots, regardless of purpose.
crawless™, a web automation technology startup headquartered in Singapore, has developed an edge computing-based web automation solution, built on top of Google’s open-source web browser. Most web automation solutions employ cloud computing, which uses centralized data centers, leading to websites easily recognizing the bots and blocking them. crawless™ uses edge computing, which is the opposite of cloud computing. Computation is done at the “edge” of the network, which, in crawless™ case, are numerous personal computers. Using this distributed edge computing model, crawless™ bots are more easily able to mimic human behavior, reducing the chances of getting blocked.
Furthermore, according to crawless™ Founder and CEO Andrei Stalbe, a distributed model such as edge computing is a huge advantage for any business. In this model, businesses don't have to buy or rent servers in advance, resulting in cost savings. Andrei says that most businesses do not have a consistent, daily need for web automation and scraping – they only need it at certain times. If they buy a server from a cloud service, they pay the same amount whether they use it or not. On the other hand, crawless™’ solution only charges businesses for the resources they use, making it very easy to scale up or scale down their web automation operations.
“With cloud, businesses have to set up their web automation platforms from scratch, and they have to pay for it in advance. In our business model, the infrastructure is already present, and ready to be used at any time. Our application is installed on many devices, but we and our clients are not paying for those devices unless we are actively using their computation power,” Andrei says.
Andrei adds that other web automation tools in the market today are highly technical, requiring businesses that use them to make heavy investments in their IT capabilities to make it work. crawless™ created an integrated development environment (IDE) for web automation, allowing for easier programming of web automation tasks. crawless™ IDE also allows users to work entirely inside the browser. Because they don't have to switch environments just to test their programs, it minimizes the risk of errors.
Andrei shares that one of their recent clients, a US-based dropshipping company, worked with crawless™ to develop a web automation algorithm for its process of buying, listing, selling, and shipping its products. This allowed the company to automate the work of a 30-person team, with only one person monitoring the process. Interested parties can book a discovery call with Andrei here to find out more about how crawless™ can do the same for them.
“Through our edge computing solution, crawless™' clients spend five times less on development and spend virtually nothing on deployment compared to users of other solutions,” he says. “Our decentralized edge infrastructure enables clients to scale up or down as fast as they want, depending on their needs. They don't need to spend a lot of time and money on setting up their web automation infrastructure, allowing them to concentrate their resources on growing their business.”
Media contact:
Name: Andrei Stalbe
Email: [email protected]
