New-age startups are mostly tech-enabled and could have taken their businesses with one founder or more working from their laptops. These ventures extensively adopt internet-enabled services or the cloud. These companies with highly analytical and passionate founders who are quick to adopt digital transformation act as torchbearers for the next decade in the nation’s economic story. In no time they are witnessing an increase in their valuation and on the path towards becoming unicorns, far ahead of well-established legacy businesses. Creating value for the community and society at large is the motto of these startups.
Cloud technology lights up the path to success
Delivery of computing services over the internet or the cloud is generally called cloud computing. These services constitute physical and virtual servers, software, networking capabilities, databases, storage, analytics, and intelligence. It is this cloud computing that is fueling the technological capabilities that are delivered on demand through the internet on a pay-per-use basis. Startups, even the bootstrapped ones can easily rent the physical infrastructure and applications offered through cloud computing. It is scalable, flexible, reliable, cost-efficient with lower infrastructure costs, and delivers quick responses. Service model options in a cloud computing environment are Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS).
Elimination of the founding team’s dilemma
Startup founders will begin exploring cloud computing options by asking friends, family, or relevant platforms. They are committed to launching their products or services within a short period. Furthermore, they have to be laser-focused on building the product appropriately. Not always do they make the best business decisions leading to setbacks, delays, and financial losses. All these challenges can be addressed by leveraging flexible and scalable cloud services where the resources, IT infrastructure, and capital investments can be easily managed, leaving the founders to focus on their core business and deliver a better customer experience.
Building a business case on cloud
For any project that requires moving workloads to the cloud, a robust business case has to be first established. The business objectives for migration have to be clearly defined. Then, all benefits and expenditures have to be taken into account before cloud migration. The cost of moving the systems, running services in the cloud along with leased lines, and comparing them with the traditional on-premise model is crucial. The cost of applications, rehosting, reconstructing, or implementing an entirely new package must be taken into consideration. Infrastructure, staffing or people management and application costs, cost of connectivity, storage, and data center management with server utilization should be considered. These should be also weighed against the drawbacks of the cloud. But the cost of ownership gap between traditional IT and cloud services is around 30 to 40 percent and the business and IT benefits go beyond costs. Improved customer experience, innovation enablement, competitive advantages, and a greater focus on core competencies in cloud computing should not be overlooked.
For implementing the cloud migration strategy, at the outset, a timeline should be created covering every stage of the process with respective deadlines, dates for rolling out the plan, and manpower deployment. If cloud tech talent is not available in-house, partnering with an external reliable cloud services company is the best option.
It is important to check time-to-time to see the progress with the performance measured, ensuring the specific business objectives are achieved. Project ownership should be outlined with manpower assigned to each task, along with who takes the specific responsibility. This ensures the overall success of the project.
With the benefits of cloud computing comes the risk factors too. Bad actors can identify vulnerabilities and exploit them causing business, customer, and reputation losses. Security measures should always be put in place. Precautions against both internal threats and external attacks have to be taken where there is shared responsibility between the cloud service provider and the customer. With the migration to the cloud, it is crucial to provide security training to employees as well. It is also important to note here that by not opting for cloud computing, businesses will continue to use outdated and legacy equipment and lose the competitive edge.
Rahul S Kurkure
Guest contributor Rahul S Kurkure is the Founder and Director of Cloud.in, an established player in the sector, equipped with superior competencies and catering to all cloud-related needs across industry verticals. Any opinions expressed in this article are strictly that of the author.
