Cloud computing isn’t just about delivering savings to startup businesses anymore – although that’s an important part of it. It’s also making changes to business that are so profound, it’s giving birth to a whole new generation of startups.
According to a survey conducted by Manchester Business School and reported by Forbes magazine, the cloud is not only delivering cost savings across the board for new businesses, but is also opening up a whole host of new innovations.
According to the study, around 62 percent of the 1,300 US and UK businesses surveyed either completely agreed or somewhat agreed that cloud computing was a key factor in the recent boom in entrepreneurship and startups.
From a purely financial perspective, this makes a lot of sense. According to the study, 52 percent of startups, or more than half, said that they wouldn’t be able to afford things like IT and data storage without the cloud.
Of course, they’re now being catered to very well by companies like HubStor. These cloud-based enterprises not only offer data storage at low cost, but they also do all of the rest of the stuff that startups need, like security and backend. It all means that the time and money costs of running a data-heavy business are collapsing. This might explain why 43 percent of firms surveyed said that the availability of cloud-based resources had made their job significantly easier.
What’s more, the cloud is also levelling the playing field. In the past, only large companies were able to afford bespoke platforms on which to offer users an incredible experience. But now off-the-shelf software, available through the cloud, is changing all that. It’s super cheap and it’s just as good, if not better, than the software being used by legacy companies. It means that the cost of running a business is coming down. 49 percent of firms questioned said that the cloud had helped them gain market share from larger companies.
Thanks to the cloud, we’re moving into what the New York Times has called the “DIY economy.” For the first time ever, ordinary people without tons of cash in the bank are able to grab a software solution here and a cloud data service there and put something together. This might be just the shot in the arm the struggling economy needs to set in back on the path to sustained growth. Having the ability to set up businesses with minimal capital means that practically anybody can take a risk and found a new multi-million dollar business and not have to go bankrupt if it all fails. The more people who feel free to start their own mini-economies, the more jobs there’ll be and the more innovation we will see.
Larger companies are going to benefit too, but perhaps not in the same way. We’re going to see larger companies becoming more like startups in their culture. They’ll be more lightweight, thanks to cloud services. And they’ll reduce their costs. According to the Manchester University survey, 66 percent of businesses said that cloud computing meant they spent less on IT.