In the UK alone, the combined annual turnover of UK SMEs in 2016 was £1.8 trillion, 47% of all private sector turnover. There has also been sustained growth in the total SME population, with increases of 59% since 2000 and 2% since 2015. If startups continue to develop at the current rate, they need a strong IT system in order to stand out from the crowd and keep pace with their competitors.
Yet, in actual fact, the majority of startups don’t have a robust or permanent IT system. It’s not that start-ups are ignoring the value and importance of IT, but rather that, with limited resources, they more often than not can’t afford to focus on anything other than the core purpose of their business, which is understandable. This often leaves start-ups at a disadvantage when competing with larger companies who may have a strengthened IT system and bigger budgets. Fortunately, with cloud computing, even start-ups with limited IT resources are able to achieve quality performance typically reserved for their larger, enterprise counterparts.
Let us examine a few reasons as to why cloud computing is perfect for start-ups and SMEs:
Flexibility
Cloud technology is flexible which enables it to help start-ups find the perfect solution for every stage a business has to go through.
Startups have to be a lot more nimble than larger companies, as they are constantly reacting to dramatic shifts in growth and stresses. In the past, organisations would have to anticipate these peaks and troughs and then build their infrastructure to handle it. This often meant overestimating and overspending most of the year. Cloud solutions help reduce this ambiguity and allow startups to quickly scale up or down, depending on their needs.
It’s easy to expand your IT infrastructure according to the dynamics of your business using the cloud. A company is able to start with a relatively small infrastructure, then gradually expand or scale up as quickly as they need, eliminating latency caused by the management of physical IT architectures.
Using cloud technology also allows users to access all their documents from any location as well as prevent catastrophic data losses through either hardware damage, theft or loss. As a nimble start-up, an employee is able to start a document in London, travel to a client meeting in Manchester – open and finish the document on the train, and then pick up where they left off at home in Southampton. This flexibility underpins the flexible processes which make the majority of businesses work in today’s society.
Reduced Costs
Perhaps one of the main benefits of the cloud is its ability to level the playing field between start-ups and SME’s compared to larger enterprises. By removing much of the initial up-front costs, the cloud allows small and medium-sized businesses to compete with their larger rivals and in some instances to surpass them. For example, at Aruba, we have specific Aruba Cloud programmes designed for start-ups where SMEs can receive free Cloud credit, exclusive offers at the end of the program and technical training.
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Performance and Reliability
In the very early days of the cloud, people worried about its security however for me, using an in-house server feels a lot more exposed than keeping your data, and important client and business information, in secure data centres guarded 24/7 by large security systems and processes.
There are also practical benefits to using cloud technology. With cloud technology, companies can easily create disaster recovery solutions and recovery plans, or data backups. While previously disaster recovery could only be afforded by large enterprises it is now available in scalable costs, all done and managed by the cloud. SMBS and startups, therefore, are now able to implement disaster recovery solutions and recovery plans by accessing the cloud infrastructure.
As you can see from the above, cloud technology is perfect for start-ups competing with their larger competitors. Cloud technology allows a start-up to become more flexible, more reliable and have a greater performance, all at a reduced cost compared to a more traditional on-prem offering.
About Aruba Cloud
Aruba Cloud (www.arubacloud.com), part of the Aruba Group, is a leading Cloud service provider. The service offers a comprehensive range of Cloud solutions for customers around the world. Thanks to a network of six data centers in various countries (UK, Germany, France, Italy and the Czech Republic), Aruba Cloud offers its own customers a range of services and solutions created to respond to the needs of customers however small or large they are, including SOHOs, startups, SMEs and large businesses. Aruba Cloud’s solutions are based on three kinds of Cloud service: VPS SSD, Public Cloud and Private Cloud, plus a selection of Cloud Storage and Backup accessories.
About We START you UP
We START you UP is the Cloud solution designed to support startups as they find their feet, nurturing technological talent and innovation. Aruba Cloud offers startups the best technology in terms of platforms and data centres, free Cloud credit and much more.Â