Many startups today are born in the cloud and for good reason. The cloud offers incredible opportunities for businesses during their startup phase with access to advanced technology without requiring large capital investments, great flexibility with how you can use the services, and, more importantly the ability to scale as their organisation looks to expand. Leveraging cloud, startups can mix with the big companies when it comes to technology capability and innovation. But where should startups begin in using cloud to level the playing fields?
We’ve been lucky enough to spend some time with AWS expert, Gaurav Arora, who leads the Startup Ecosystem for AWS in the Asia Pacific region. Gaurav spends his time helping startups learn and grow in the AWS ecosystem and has been involved in helping literally thousands of startups find their way in the AWS Cloud. In this series of three masterclass sessions he reveals through his experiences the strategies and ideas that your help your startup succeed with AWS today.
GA: Startups using AWS can find what they need on the AWS website and console. It’s basically a self-service system with a lot of customers picking and choosing technologies themselves. However, it can be a bit tricky selecting what’s right for you if you are not sure what you are looking for. Leveraging AWS’s free Digital Training can help get you a fast start, helping you get on top of any challenging concepts from the outset. Of course, that’s just the beginning, and the more advanced you get, there is more AWS Training to help you achieve great things on AWS.
GA: It’s about the depth of AWS knowledge, and being able to identify the services that can combine to create not just a working solution but something that’s scalable and cost effective too. The more understanding and knowledge you have, the better the edge you will have on your competitors, so investing in training on AWS can really pay dividends when you’re further down the road.
GA: Scalability is one of the main reasons to consider using the AWS Cloud for startups. With AWS you can grow your technology resources for your business on demand. Storage, compute power and services can be added or reduced with just a few clicks. Even the largest companies started small, an idea, an inspiration, and as the business grows so does the hosting, allowing you to adjust the size of the service you require to the rate of your growth. Previously, in-house computing required an estimation of requirements regularly to cater for business growth. This is no longer necessary.
GA: It can be tough to compete with bigger, more established businesses. Training your own staff – earning certifications on AWS can give you skills you can trust, using the people who already know your business. So, with training, startups can have a fully certified AWS IT professional on staff as easily as can an already established, large business.
GA: Learn your tools, so you can make sure you get the right level of utilization, as usage translates to cost. AWS allows you to build in auto-scaling, so new businesses can monitor and ensure that they stay effectively utilized as they scale.
GA: Most common? It’s probably about how to optimize their cloud infrastructure to get the best performance to cost ratio, especially as they scale their businesses.
GA: We conduct cost optimization workshops or architecture review sessions with our Solutions Architects to help you run a lean startup on AWS, or another way is to work with a consulting partner to help with setup and optimisation of services. But it can be even more cost-effective to train up existing staff to do the same and get more certifications in-house. Especially since you then retain the knowledge and skills in the business for the long term.
Hopefully that’s given you some insight into the best ways to get started with AWS. In part two of this interview series with Gaurav, we’ll be looking at what startups can do to push ahead of their competition with increased innovation and efficiency using AWS.
To learn more, get started with free digital training from AWS.
