#Biz talk: How to gain elasticity with AWS cloud global infrastructure ft. Kalle Palomäki, Senior Venture Capital Business Development at Amazon Web Services.
We are happy to interview Kalle Palomäki, Senior Venture Capital Business Development Manager at Amazon Web Services who explains in this exclusive interview how startups can grow and easily support their products and services thanks to AWS cloud infrastructure. As we’ve partnered with Amazon Web Services on a special offer: Everest clients can redeem up to $5,000 in AWS credits to help scale and grow their business. Read the interview to learn all the advantages of using cloud computing for your company.
What is, in a few words, cloud computing?
The term “cloud computing” refers to the on-demand delivery of IT resources via the Internet with pay-as-you-go pricing. With cloud computing, AWS manages and maintains the technology infrastructure in a secure environment and businesses access these resources via the Internet to develop and run their applications. Capacity can grow or shrink instantly and businesses only pay for what they use.
What are the key benefits for startups to build their infrastructure on the cloud?
There are five key benefits that AWS cloud provides to startups and other customers.
The first is agility. AWS lets customers quickly spin up resources as they need them, deploying hundreds or even thousands of servers in minutes. This means startups can very quickly develop and roll out new applications. They can also experiment faster without risk. If an experiment fails, they can de-provision the resources.
The second reason is cost savings. AWS allows customers to have only variable expenses, and they only pay for IT as they consume it.
The third reason is elasticity. Customers can provision the amount of resources that they actually need, knowing they can instantly scale up or down along with the needs of their business. This reduces cost and improves the customer’s ability to meet their user’s demands.
The fourth reason is that the cloud allows customers to innovate faster because they can focus their IT resources on developing applications that differentiate their business instead of having to manage infrastructure and data centers.
The fifth reason is that AWS enables customers to deploy globally in minutes. Many startups have global user bases. AWS cloud has 77 Availability Zones across 24 geographic regions worldwide, which enable startups to provide great customer experience for their users no matter where they are.
Why is this technology more relevant to startups’ needs? (scalability, cost-flexibility, etc)
The startup needs vary depending on the stage of the startup. An early stage startup is typically building the minimum viable product and trying to find the product market fit. The key benefits of AWS cloud for early stage startups include agility, breadth and depth of AWS services, and effortless infrastructure setup. Later stage startups already have customer traction and they are focusing more on scaling and expanding their business. These startups appreciate elasticity, AWS global network, and cost savings that they can achieve with AWS cloud.
With agility, startups can quickly build new solutions, spin up resources and release versions, gather feedback, and de-provision resources and modify the solutions based on the feedback. AWS has 175 fully featured services in many areas including compute, storage, database, machine learning and artificial intelligence, mobile, and application development. Many services are serverless meaning there is no need for the startup to manage the underlying infrastructure. Instead, the startup can focus on building their solutions and improve customer experience.
Elasticity allows startups to quickly and automatically scale up or down the resources in response to changing customer demand. AWS cloud global infrastructure ensures startup’s end customers get fast access to startup company’s services and have seaming less user experience no matter where they are. Finally, AWS constantly works with customers to lower their cost by optimizing the architecture and introducing new lower cost services. In fact, we have lowered our prices 80 times since AWS launched in 2006.
Which aspects should startups pay attention to when selecting a cloud computing solution?
If a startup is going to partner with an infrastructure provider, it’s typically a long-term decision they’re making, and they really want to understand what’s unique about the partner that they are choosing. There are three things that are different about AWS:
We’re unusually customer-focused. 90% of what we build is driven by what customers tell us matters, and the other 10% are things we hear from customers and invent on their behalf.
We’re pioneers. We like to hire builders who look at customer experiences that are flawed, then figure out how to reinvent those. In a space that’s moving as fast as the cloud is, to be partnered with the company that has the most functionality, the largest community, and that had the vision for cloud from the start is very attractive.
We’re unusually long-term oriented. We’re trying to build relationships and a business that lasts longer than all of us. And you do that by doing right by customers over a long period of time.
Could you please explain what AWS Activate is and why this program was created? What services are you offering and how do they help startups to get started in the cloud?
AWS Activate is a program that offers startups free tools and resources to quickly get started on AWS. The program provides several benefits including AWS Activate credits, AWS technical support, and AWS training and resources. A startup can obtain up to $100,000 in AWS Activate credits. These credits help startups build and scale their solutions. The credits can be applied to a large set of AWS services across the platform, including computing, databases, networking, AI/ML, IoT, mobile, or application development. Startups also receive support from AWS experts, such as architectural guidance and best practices as they build and test. AWS Activate provides startups access to training so that they can enhance their skills and knowledge. This ensures startups can be more effective and do more in the cloud.
Good news: everest clients can now redeem up to $5,000 in AWS credits to help scale and grow their business. Not on everest yet? Sign up here.
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