What Are the Top Reasons for SMEs and Startups to Use Cloud Computing?
Cloud Computing is a new breed of technology that is extensively used today. Many companies are developing technologies that are changing the outlook of businesses, is a type of internet based computing where various services are delivered to an organization’s computer through the internet. Moreover, there are numerous definitions for cloud computing such as computers for rent on the internet, virtualized servers, storage in sky etc. Instead of using local servers or personal devices to handle applications, it involves sharing of computing resources.
it is not required to build individual servers or built data centres space, or software licensing etc. Also, entrepreneurs need to pay for the cloud service as per usage similar to electricity. There is no capital expenditure in case. Thus, cloud computing is basically computational power on demand, that is uniformly available like electricity.
There are three layers:
*Software as a Service (SaaS): SaaS refers to software that is deployed over the internet. For example, Dropbox, Gmail are SaaS. The services offered are paid in nature. For example, Google apps for enterprise can only be availed by paying for the service. The SaaS are applications that are consumed by users. The most popular SaaS enterprise tool is Salesforce.com that is an enterprise CRM application.
* Platform as a Service (PaaS): The PaaS is one level below SaaS that serves as a computing platform or solution stack as a service. Entrepreneurs need to deploy the solution stack on top of the application software. The solution stack would comprise of a managed database and the operating system would be loaded on to it. There also consists of runtime environments for different programming languages.
* Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): It refers to virtualized IT infrastructure as a service. These comprise of virtualization, servers, network and storage. The most popular IaaS are Amazon Web Service and Rackspace.
The following are the reasons for SMEs and startups
* No Capital Expenditure and Pay as you Go: Cloud computing does not incur any capital expenditure and it is available as a “pay to use” service. SMEs and startups just have to sign up for the cloud service and use the computational power and pay the bill. Thus, there is no investment required with respect to data centre resources, servers, licencing etc.
* Elastic Capacity: Elastic capacity refers to adding or removing of servers that are hosting applications when required. Elastic capacity helps in handling any load and also helps in increasing the computational power to support the load.
* Self Service: Cloud computing is very API driven and self-service oriented. No guidance or infrastructure is required to understand cloud computing.
* Automation: A startup can automate lot of processes in order to sustain an application. For example in any technology venture, any application is first deployed on development environment, then to test environment and then to production environment. The application can work effectively if the three environments are automated
