Use Cloud Computing to Transform your Startup into Tomorrow’s Mid-Market Powerhouse

Startups are launched around the world every minute and have goals of making it to the mid-market by daybreak. In an extremely competitive marketplace, to reach the mid-market, a great value proposition alone wouldn’t be enough. These startups also need to control business expenses by improving their operational efficiencies.

High growth businesses around the world are already utilizing cloud-based infrastructure to extract operational efficiencies and cost savings. Startups are no exceptions, and leading startups in India are keenly aware of this reality, with examples of organizations such as Ola & Flipkart, who have been taking advantage of new age cloud platform like Azure for quite a while now.

Recently at the largest technology conference of the country, we had the opportunity to meet a lot of new and promising startups, innovations from deep learning AI bots to spectral satellite connected data analytics engine to estimate crop performance were present. VCs were very welcoming to these ideas although they were hesitant to give them investments because of their IT operations. Scalability of the enterprise operation has caused them an arm and a leg. For a new business to compete in the market, it has become inevitable for them to migrate to the cloud.

James Steven, Vice President, and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research were quoted in an article by searchcloudcomputing, as saying: “First and foremost, startups that offer software or online services have to prove their business model works in the cloud before they are likely to get any venture capital funding these days”.

Migration to the cloud makes it easier for startups to set up operations with exceptional IT capabilities and greater agility than traditional IT models. With its inherent cost benefits and limitless IT possibilities, cloud arms startups with optimal operational potential to compete in the marketplaces.

Cloud computing allows you to accelerate your innovation. Build simple to complex projects with an easy-to-use and consistent portal experience that offers the cloud services you need most.

startups cloud computing


For startups, there are various other benefits as well:


Immense scalability- This is one of the most valuable and predominant features of cloud computing for startups. Through scalability, you can scale up your data storage capacity or scale it down to meet the demands of your growing business. This feature enables you to accommodate larger workloads without disruption or complete transformation of existing infrastructure.

Minimal Investment – When it comes to cost benefits, Azure and AWS provide reserved instance on their servers which enables them to access cloud services at a rate as low as data center providers.Know more about reserved instances on cloud. Apart from cost-cutting, there are more solution, cost-effectiveness, and savings which can be achieved with cloud computing technology.

Undivided Attention- -For any company whether startup or MNC it is important to focus on core job. If you have a great idea and want to cap it, then worrying about underlying infrastructure or platform should be your last priority. Cloud computing takes care of the underlying framework and lets you work seamlessly and at scale.

 

In the present day, there are umpteen cloud service partners and technologies for every architecture that you might imagine. If you still haven’t haven’t chosen a cloud service partner – this article is for you.  A cloud service partner can help you in managing your cloud infrastructure, refactoring and re-architecting your application, providing database solutions, managing and configuring the networks, security and much more. Cloud services are becoming increasingly desirable for companies because they offer advantages in terms of cost, scalability, and accessibility.

Sysfore, a Microsoft Gold Cloud Partner and certified AWS partner offer highly tailored managed services to supplement your internal IT support resources and skills to meet the demanding SLAs required by your business. Based on the different levels of abstractions in the services and your requirements, we can identify what suits your business the most. 

Startups need to be scalable, flexible and agile to grow rapidly with limited investment in capital, labor or land. Following are a few different cloud models startups can choose from.

 

IaaS

Infrastructure as a Service(IaaS) is a low-level solution, similar to a Linux Ubuntu server with nothing installed on it. IaaS provides a virtual computing infrastructure that startups can use to access their infrastructure remotely via an internet connection.

IaaS is an ideal choice for startups that want to:

  • Back up virtual machines or server databases & logs to the cloud.
  • Extend On-Premise networks to the cloud and back-up data.
  • Host business-critical applications with little to no downtime.

Benefits of IaaS:

  • Eliminates all purchasing costs, fees, and maintenance charges associated with hardware.
  • Offered as a pay-as-you-go service, saving businesses a ton of money.
  • Can be scaled up and down quickly in response to an enterprise’s requirements.
  • Provides a consolidated disaster recovery infrastructure, reducing costs and increasing manageability.
Sysfore’s solutions for one of the early stage technology startups has led to a 72% increase in productivity and a 150% reduction in time required earlier.

PaaS

Platform as a Service(PaaS) PaaS refers to cloud platforms that provide runtime environments for developing, testing, and managing applications. Software developers can deploy applications – ranging from simple to sophisticated – without needing to configure or operate typical IT development & execution infrastructure such as — servers, databases, operating systems, development tools. Therefore, PaaS is the most suitable choice for software development companies.

Paas is an ideal choice for startups that want to:

  • Reduce the time taken for the development of applications.
  • Run multiple programming languages.
  • Enable collaboration of remote and distributed teams.

Benefits of PaaS:

  • Simplifies the process of application deployment, management, and scaling, allowing for increased developer productivity
  • Improved infrastructure utilization, that removes unnecessary human configuration tasks by providing self-service interfaces.
  • Eliminates the need for time-consuming configuration tasks, by accessing a user-friendly “plug-and-play” interface
At Sysfore, we have helped our clients reduce the turnaround time of information gathering from 6 hours to 30 minutes, which in-turn accelerated decision-making across the organization and reinvent swiftly in case of changing market conditions.  

Adopting cloud computing can be an effective tool for startup companies to manage costs. With no upfront costs and scalable as per the needs of the start-up, migrating to the cloud seems like a promising option to help enhance a  startup’s growth. But understanding what your business needs is also important. Book a free expert consultation to include cloud in your IT planning.

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Sysfore is a Gold Microsoft Azure and AWS partner with 8+ years of cloud consulting and managed service expertise. We have the privilege of executing the largest data center migration projects in India and have engaged with over 100+ customers on their cloud journey.

Cloud Migration: Strategies For A Successful Migration

The global cloud computing market is now worth $180 billion in vendor revenues with the market still growing at 24% annually (source: Synergy Research). It’s extremely critical for organizations to carefully think through their cloud strategy as cloud gives even the small player the ammunition to overthrow the biggies in a short period of time.

While planning for cloud migration you should take a holistic view of all the aspects involved in meeting the business and technical goals of your organization.

The 4 major activities involved in cloud adoption for any business are:

  1. Cloud Readiness assessment
  2. Choosing a Cloud Partner
  3. Cloud Migration strategies
  4. Cloud Management

The right cloud migration strategy is crucial for a successful cloud journey

cloud migration strategies

In this article we are going to delve deep into strategies for cloud migration:

After cloud readiness assessment and choosing a cloud partner, business needs should be evaluated, potential benefits should be validated, and a cloud migration strategy must be defined. The migration strategy should encompass the business priorities, application usage scenarios, challenges, technology benefits, risks and challenges. Based on the cloud migration strategy, a roadmap should be designed which can provide detailed activities involved.

Planning and Assessment

 

Technical & Functional

As part of cloud readiness assessment, application architecture review would help in deciding the best suitable cloud platform or services to deploy the application. Based on the chosen cloud and technology matrix, cloud architecture should be drawn up in detail.

The cloud architecture should cover the following critical things

  • Compute resource configurations
  • Network architecture
  • Storage models
  • Load balancing
  • Setup Backup/Disaster recovery plan
  • Security – Both at Application & Infra level
  • Setup for alerts/monitoring

 

Financial

Once the cloud deployment architecture is decided upon, a monthly estimate of the cost is calculated. With the estimated monthly spending a cost benefit analysis should be carried out in an objective way. This would be considered as the baseline and the variable parameters like storage, bandwidth should be defined with clear growth numbers.

According to Forrester’s cloud predictions, “global public cloud market will jump from $146 billion in 2017 to $178 billion in 2018. Beyond this year, Forrester predicts it will continue to grow at a 22 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR).”

By the end of 2018, more than half of global enterprises will rely on at least one public cloud platform for digital transformation. -Forrester

 

Transformation & Migration

A detailed migration plan with the phases involved, application batches for migration, staging setup, data migration plan and testing plan should be abstracted.

Managed and Unmanaged Tools

Once the basic cloud architecture is set up and required resources are provisioned, resources should be moved based on the identified priority and also applying the dependency constraint using varied tools. For e.g. Backing up VM and moving it to cloud or creating an instance on VM and then installation/ configuration of all the existing applications.

Microsoft Azure and AWS have cloud migration tools which could help in easily deploying some applications to cloud.

Microsoft Azure has a standard process outlined, read now.

If you need an easy, one-and-done method to move data at small scales, go for the following tools:

 

Refactoring

Review the technology stack to validate the compatibility of the application with the cloud. The changes that are identified as a result of this exercise and the best option should be agreed in conjunction with the customer.

Post Migration

This phase focuses on setting up the manageability aspects of the cloud environment

Documentation

As a good base for reference, all the changes implemented, architectures, tools used should be documented to ensure everything is in place. The document should include information around security setup, database management, storage space, completeness of resource migration, data validation, application stability, BOM(monthly used services with cost), backup and DR policies, etc.

As a best practice, keep the dynamic data close to compute and static data close to the user.

Cloud Managed Services

This activity focuses on setting up the manageability aspects of the cloud environment. As a first, maximum process/activities should be automated for minimal manual intervention. Automation can be done in the areas of autoconfiguration, scaling, monitoring, backup, release & updates.e.g: Automation of scaling up your cloud instance when the average of CPU value 10 minutes is greater than 70%.

Cloud monitoring is another key area that is important for cloud management. Implementation of monitoring at both infrastructure and application level should be done by leveraging the inbuilt tools offered by the cloud provider.

There are a few cloud monitoring tools and management solutions which are designed to help create a more proactive cloud.

  • Microsoft Cloud Monitoring – Using Azure cloud? Look no further,  Microsoft gives you a full picture of your web app’s performance by providing log analysis, application monitoring, and security alerts. The best part is that these tools are built into Azure, so you don’t have to install any new software. Microsoft Cloud Monitoring is perfect for companies who want a simple solution for monitoring their Microsoft stack.
  • Amazon CloudWatchAmazon CloudWatch is a monitoring service for AWS cloud resources and the applications you run on AWS. You can use Amazon CloudWatch to collect and track metrics, collect and monitor log files, set alarms, and automatically react to changes in your AWS resources.
  • Third party tools include: ExoPrise, Datadog, Logic Monitor and many more

Sysfore technologies manage cloud environment with a model around inputs from the client on appropriate up-time, DR strategy, resource usage, SLA based commitments, incident based response and resolution times.

Know More about sysfore cloud managed services

Cost optimization

64% of the time the cost changes and it is likely that the initial estimate might decrease or increase. A few reasons for cost change are increased storage space, data transfer issues, prolonged migration duration.

Draft a revised bill of material to make sure the actual cost is in par with the initial cost estimate. Return on Investment (ROI) should be calculated to perform a cost-benefit analysis in an objective way.

According to recent stats, it is estimated that by 2020, more than 1/3rd of the data will pass through the cloud. Well, it would be better to learn swimming than to sink.

Here are the following benefits you would get as a result of cloud migration:

  • Modernize Current IT asset base
  • Prepare for future needs
  • Lower infrastructure costs
  • Increase Business Agility
  • Disaster Recovery
  • Security

Sysfore, a Microsoft Gold partner, uses leading network, technology, and service expertise to deliver our service anytime, virtually anywhere, quickly and efficiently. We have helped over 80 small enterprises and 30 mid-sized enterprises across the globe for a successful cloud migration in the past 8 years. Contact one of our experts today and we will help you find the perfect solution for your business. Write to us at info@sysfore.com or give us a call at +91 (80) 4110 5555.