AWS is being used by businesses of all sizes across the world. From a few dollars a month to millions of dollars in infrastructure service costs; businesses of all scales rely on AWS for their infrastructure needs.
But what specific benefits do you get when you choose AWS as your startup partner? Well! That’s what we plan to pen down for you in this post.
Start Small
Lean startup is a very popular methodology for launching companies nowadays, and this strategy has proven itself. Everyone is adopting it. AWS helps you adopt this methodology on the infrastructure side.
You don’t need a big upfront investment that is associated with setting up your own on-premise infrastructure. You save both time & money. AWS allows you to pick and choose what you need today. Not tomorrow! Not far in the future but today. And knowing that you can scale it up at the click of a button when you need it in the future, feels nothing short of magic.
Take away is that the ability to provision infrastructure for today results in a lot of cost savings.
Cost Benefits of Scale
AWS is huge in every sense. The Scale AWS works on, is way beyond individual businesses’ reach. AWS is used by thousands of customers and that allows them higher economies of scale. That’s good news for you, as a startup, you get the benefit of that scale, because for you that directly translates into lower pay-as-you-go prices.
This low variable infrastructure cost can be a differentiating factor for a successful & failed startup.
Global Presence
AWS is present in 27+ geographical regions and is expanding every year. As a startup business, you must prepare for success.
What happens when your business is a success and you are growing rapidly, looking to go global? Does your infrastructure support your business or it becomes a bottleneck? That’s an outcome you have to strategize for, beforehand.
With AWS you can start from a specific region and when the time comes, AWS makes it very easy for you to take your business to every corner of the world. That’s something startups could only dream of a decade back.
Wide selection of services
AWS have the most number of services available and they regularly launch more of them each year in their annual event AWS re:Invent. I mean if you can think of an IT service your startup may need, chances are AWS has it! And you get access to all of them with just one Signup.
And not only the sheer number, but the depth of customization they provide for each service is astonishing. Storage, Computing, Databases, Backups, Monitoring, Security, Machine Learning, and whatnot, AWS has solutions for every need a startup has.
They redefined object storage with S3 which is the top choice for file storage in the cloud for many years now. RDS & DynamoDB are doing it in Database Space and similarly, they just have winner services in each category.
Backup & Security
Bad things can happen anytime. That’s a part and parcel of online businesses. It happens with startups as well as established enterprises. You may not avoid the Incidents 100% but you can prepare for them and reduce their likelihood.
AWS makes it very easy for startups to implement a backup strategy and recover from incidents before they can have a disastrous impact on businesses. It also allows you to easily configure baseline security for your infrastructure. This is not to say that you can’t have a fully functional security posture on AWS but as a startup, it’s important to have a decent security & backup strategy without going too deep into your pockets. That’s what AWS can help you with. You get access to security features that only enterprises with big pockets could think of earlier.
Funding & Credits
AWS always have some programs running to help startups build, test, and scale their business and they would provide you with free tools, resources, content, and expert support to accelerate your startup at every stage
You can read more about their AWS Activate program here: AWS Activate
You can apply for up to $100,000 in AWS Activate credits to help cover your AWS service usage. Right Credits and best-in-class personalized business support can be a launchpad for your successful startup.
When you succeed, they grow. I believe that reason is enough for them to truly want you to succeed and that is reflected in their startup credit programs and the support they offer.
Conclusion
There was a time when startups used to be at a disadvantage because they didn’t have the infrastructure capabilities & budget to compete with established businesses, and that limited their success rate for a good period. But that has changed now and cloud services have leveled the playing field by providing world-class infrastructure services to everyone. Almost a million small and mid-sized companies are using AWS as their choice of cloud platform. I am pretty sure it should work out for your startup too!
