5 reasons why cloud computing and start-ups disrupt the enterprise software markets

This sponsored post in produced by Bob Rizika, CEO of ProfitBricks USA.

While software has been “eating the world” for years in the consumer world, now start-up software is infiltrating even the largest of enterprises at an ever increasing rate. Today’s enterprise-grade datacenter infrastructure makes it easier than ever for startups to rapidly build and deploy disruptive software. This is the basis for applications like Box.net, Marketo, and Nimble that quickly emerged as “must-have” software.

I’ve been in the software and infrastructure business long enough to have seen everything – from the fall of the VAX to rise of fall of client/server architectures – but it’s within the last 3 years that rapid displacement of enterprise software has taken place.  It’s a mix of “must have” and “good enough” that drive the growth of these start-ups and it’s Cloud computing that is “greasing the wheels.”  Gartner says the worldwide market for Software as a Service (SaaS) will be $14.4 billion in 2012. Much of that is from companies and products created in the Cloud.

After speaking with hundreds of software start-ups, here’s my advice and top 5 list for start-up software executives of why the Cloud is perfectly suited to be the IT “launch pad” for start-ups:

5. Quickly Start-up – Getting started developing and testing prototypes and beta releases in either bootstrapped or VC funding models is now easier and requires less capital expenditures than ever.   Then, assuming that the software rocks, your PR push works, and the stars properly align, your venture may grow rapidly within the first few weeks.

4. Scale Simply and Easily – To meet this growing demand, you will quickly need to add additional servers, compute power, and storage. If you architected your application based on software industry best practices, it will be really easy to for you maintain a rapid growth pace. Cloud Computing providers offer you the option to scale-out by adding more machines or scale-up with larger instances to the next possible configuration level or package. Some Cloud Computing providers are more flexible and allow every server to be a different configuration and some even enable vertical scaling without restarting. Scaling your IT infrastructure up or out has never been easier. For the first time ever, start-ups like yours now have access to millions of CPU cores and petabytes of data storage – something only enterprises and their enterprise applications could access.

3. Efficient Cost Structure – Cloud Computing allows your start-up to be more efficient with its budget. You will only pay for what you use – without any upfront commitment and without contract lock-in. During peak usage periods, you may consume more resources and fewer resources during non-peak times. Combined with the attributes like zero CAPEX and elasticity, this becomes a key factor to consider when evaluating a potential move to the Cloud.

2. More flexibility – Deployment environment is no longer a limiting factor when selecting the right development stack. The Cloud Computing market is very competitive and start-ups have a variety of offerings from which you can select the service that best fits your specific needs. Start-up organizations typically build applications on variety of operating systems, application platforms, frameworks and languages. Cloud Computing’s infrastructure-as-a-service model (IaaS) is flexible enough to accommodate all of them.

1. Do what you do best – The biggest advantage Cloud Computing enables for start-up organizations is giving them more time to spend on developing the application and building the business. You no longer need to budget for servers, network gear, and storage units. In addition, Cloud Computing requires fewer experts on your operations team, which also helps to keep your focus on the product, not the back office.

Cloud computing allows start-up organizations to run as efficiently and effectively as possible. Take advantage of its power for your business.

Author: Bob Rizika has over 25 years of experience leading and building successful technology companies in the Infrastructure, Content Distribution and Mobile industries. Today, Bob is leading the team at ProfitBricks, a Cloud Computing 2.0 service provider offering more speed and value, while requiring less effort to setup and maintain.

Before ProfitBricks, Bob was CEO of Blackwave Inc., which was sold to Juniper Networks in 2010. Blackwave was one of the first companies to build a scalable, multi protocol video delivery appliance. Earlier in his career, Bob co-founded and worked at several technology companies, including VidScale, Reflective Technologies and VerdiSoft Corporation. Bob received his MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1994 and holds a BSME from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Image credit: HappyDancing/ShutterStock