Ankit Dudhwewala is the Co-founder and CEO of Appitsimple Infotek, a company that builds and runs digital products. Appitsimple runs CallHippo – a SaaS-based VOIP product, and SoftwareSuggest – an IT software and services discovery platform and runs it successfully. As the co-founder and CEO of Appitsimple, Ankit sets qualitative and quantitative objectives for the organization. Ankit coordinates with team members to ensure set goals are met and review objectives periodically. While Ankit has competencies in multiple domains, ‘he excels at sales and marketing. ‘
Every day, start-ups are becoming increasingly popular. Unlike a regular business, a start-up is innovative in nature as there is no such business prior to it. It usually comprises a young team that has a great idea and an implementation plan on the one hand, and lack of money and resources on the other. Start-ups form the backbone of the economy and significantly contribute to a country’s economic goals.
Despite making up nearly 90 percent of all registered businesses, start-ups continue to remain underserved compared to large enterprises. The biggest handicap that these small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) suffer from is that they are yet to fully embrace the latest technologies. Start-ups segment in the cloud market is struggling with its technical and business shortcomings, that have been further exacerbated by the Covid-19 crisis. Reports have shown that a rising number of SMBs are midway in their endeavours to migrate data and applications to the cloud. This will benefit them as they will get more flexibility and agility to scale their business, enhance storage and bandwidth, and reduce costs.
Although several start-ups have migrated to the cloud, their overall journey is devoid of a seamless experience. Surveys reveal that a large number of start-ups encounter roadblocks when navigating the move to the cloud. To succeed in cloud adoption and extract full value from it, start-ups need to overcome these challenges.
Challenges in Cloud-Adoption for Start-ups
Research has shown that over 80 percent of start-ups indicate that they are planning to increase investments in cloud infrastructure in the next 3 to 6 months. However, many of these new businesses have less resources that pose as a barrier to their entry in the competitive cloud market. The cost of sustaining IT infrastructure is a formidable hurdle for many founders.
In addition, the lack of know-how is another unique challenge that SMB founders face because they struggle to keep pace with the evolving technological trends and technical expertise required to manage cloud infrastructure. Security is another cause of concern for many start-ups as they have a hard time implementing the essential security protocols.
How Cloud Computing Can Help Start-Ups
As start-ups continue to adapt themselves to the changing needs presented by the Covid-19 crisis, cloud is expected to remain the backbone of the post-pandemic tech landscape. Start-up founders need to look for innovative ways to reduce their IT infrastructure costs and maintain security of their platform from future threats. Founders and developers, additionally, need to support their employees by training them in cloud computing.
Cloud computing can prove to be a game-changer for start-ups, given the large-scale benefits it offers for their growth. It is easy to use and requires minimum investment making it cost-effective. Businesses do not need any special resources and pay only for the actual usage of services, increasing their investments as and when the company grows. Hence, start-ups can begin with a small budget.
Majority of cloud providers offer a set of services and technologies, which can help start-ups protect their data as it is located on reliable servers that make regular backups. It saves time that goes into provisioning of resources. As the business gets access to resources easily and quickly, the organisation becomes highly flexible. Cloud computing also allows businesses to configure auto-scaling so that their infrastructure can grow or shrink depending on the workload and requirement. With cloud infrastructure, team members of an organisation can access project data anytime irrespective of their location and from any device or operating system. Cloud computing can offer start-ups a monthly subscription service and flexibility to modify technologies to keep up with the growth of business.
Start-ups need to be prepared for all kinds of disasters – right from tornados to hackers. This can make companies lose their data permanently which can leave them bankrupt. And due to data loss, start-ups can also face a lot of legal problems. But with cloud-based backups, companies needn’t worry about losing data as it can be stored in remote locations.
Another extremely important benefit of cloud computing is sustainability. By showing their customers a commitment to sustainability, start-ups stand to gain several new customers and retain them for long. Also, cloud computing enables companies to reduce their carbon footprint as all the information and transactions will be digitally stored, eliminating the use of papers.
Overall, an awareness of cloud technology’s usage and implementation will cause a streamlined shift to the cloud, enabling start-ups to overcome obstacles to its adoption. Cloud infrastructure can be highly efficient for start-ups as it helps reduce costs involved in the business, scale projects, increase security and much more. Barring a few minuses, the cloud has grown into a platform which has gained universal acceptance and recognition, transforming businesses across verticals.