Cloud computing is a hot topic that has been discussed by many industry professionals, developers and hobbyists all around the world. The idea that we might no longer need expensive hardware to run businesses is a promising one, but if we don’t need to spend thousands in office equipment to operate a business, then it opens up many more opportunities for budding entrepreneurs to kickstart their businesses for almost nothing—a far cry from the business opportunities that we had a few decades ago.
What is cloud computing?
First, let’s demystify cloud computing so that we can properly explain how it works and why it’s reducing your startup costs. To explain cloud computing and why it has advantages over traditional computing, let’s use a very simple example. Your computer has a brain known as the CPU. The is brain constantly improving as technology advances, but as a result, they get more and more expensive to replace. The CPU works extremely hard to perform tasks that you assign to it, but ultimately there is a limit to the number of instructions it can execute within a short time frame.
Let’s say you want to perform a complex task on your computer, such as calculating something that involves a lot of numbers or putting together a video for your company’s advertising campaign. You’ll probably realise that these tasks don’t finish instantly. That’s because your CPU is working hard to try and finish all of the calculations involved in performing something mathematically complex or to render a video. In other words, the power of your computer is limited by the CPU.
If we break down this task of what the CPU does, we essentially give it some input and we receive an output. The time it takes to receive the output depends on how powerful the computer is. But what if we could use a more powerful computer to perform those complex calculations, and then be sent the result? This is what cloud computing is. Instead of performing complex tasks on our own computer, we send those instructions and the input to an extremely expensive computer somewhere else in the world and we receive the results back on our home computer. This means we can run complex applications on something as simple and cheap as a smartphone or a Chrome OS laptop. So without further ado, let’s look at some of the clear advantages that cloud computing offers.
Rapid Development and Prototyping
One of the biggest draws to cloud computing is the ability to develop and deploy new applications with relative ease compared to traditional programming languages and methods. With the help of services such as Stackify, software developers can now create web-based applications in an extremely short amount of time and also keep track of performance metrics. It’s incredibly fast, you can pump out updates in a short amount of time and because everything is based in the cloud, updates are deployed instantly and everyone’s version is kept the same, resulting in fewer compatibility issues.
Readily Available Talent
With the number of graduates leaving college and university with degrees in computer science and web development, plus the possibility of hiring freelance developers from around the world, you’re never going to run out of talent to hire. Recruiting a software developer for your company might not seem like the best idea as a startup, but if your primary focus is on your website and providing cloud services, or using cloud services as a means to improve your business’s productivity and efficiency, then it’s an investment worth considering at an early stage of your business’s life.
Reduced Costs
Another big draw to cloud computing is the reduced costs of starting up a business. Since you’re not spending money on expensive hardware, you’re effectively able to pay for cheap computers, laptops or even smart devices and use them as daily business hardware. Because all of the calculations are performed on off-site computers, they don’t need to be very powerful, and with the ready availability of cloud storage, they don’t even need to have large hard drives either. The only thing your business needs is a decently fast internet connection in order to download large files if you’re working on things such as videos and large images.
Reliability
Because all of the services are hosted on professional servers in another location, it means that there’s very little chance of your services failing due to hardware corruption or issues that are out of your control. For instance, if a hard drive fails in your office, even with redundancy it’s going to need an eventual replacement. With cloud computing, this is no longer an issue because the servers are safe, secure and hosted in an environment that is safe from external damage. Even if your office burns down overnight, you can still access all of your data, creating the ultimate continuity plan for your business.