How to choose the optimal cloud for the needs of your startup?

Startup companies face many challenges during the early process of developing their business. From market research, product/service creation, financing, marketing, to hiring and scaling a team, every step comes with potential obstacles.

One of the key decisions that can have long-term consequences for the success of a startup is the choice of technologies to use in order to reach end customers as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Although a seemingly easy decision due to the availability of information and offers from all sides, startup companies often make mistakes both when choosing the technologies they will use to create the platform, and when choosing the cloud provider that will be responsible for the smooth operation of their infrastructure.

Let’s go through some of the key questions to which you must have an answer ready, before deciding on a cloud provider that will properly support your business.

Why is the selection of technologies important for the successful development of a startup company?

The sphere of technological development day by day includes more and more different programming languages ​​and frameworks for platform development. The developers who work on the development of the platform have a big burden – how to choose technologies that will be able to properly satisfy everything that their platform should provide?

Startup founders are often the main developers in the early stages of business, which is why they often choose technologies they already know and have experience with.

However, this process can often lead to platforms being created using technologies that are outdated, do not work well with newer technologies, are more difficult to maintain, have security issues, have lost support, and the like.

A platform created in this way cannot function flawlessly because it entails various problems in terms of security, maintenance, functionality, and finally performance.

It is of great importance that the technologies used are as stable as possible, compatible for operation and integration, as well as regularly maintained – all with the aim of creating a safer environment whose further development will be simple and fluid.

What do the technologies I used have to do with choosing a cloud provider?

Cloud providers make it possible to build the infrastructure on which the platform will work. Depending on which technologies were used to create it, providers offer various types of services that aim to better support and optimize the operation of the platform itself.

Various cloud providers offer specialized services for working with specific programming languages, libraries, databases, and containerization. By researching these services and how to work with the technologies they use, companies have the potential to find the perfect set of services they need.

In this way, using the ready-made service provided by a certain cloud provider, easier integration, better performance, and simplified opportunities for further growth and development of the platform are achieved.

For example, the AWS cloud provides better opportunities for Node.js application development by considering services like AWS Lambda and AWS API Gateway that enable serverless application development and scaling. If we add to that AWS Cloudfront that enables fast delivery, the AWS cloud provider provides low latency and optimal performance, making it a perfect environment for developing a Node.js application.

On the other hand, .NET applications are most often hosted on the Microsoft Azure cloud, considering the integration with Azure App Services and Azure SQL Database. The reason for this is that these services are already adapted to work with the .NET environment, making it easier to manage, scale and connect to SQL Server.

What if the provider whose service I want is too expensive?

The main problem startup companies face is finance. Their business is still not developed, the income does not come from the clients but from the founders.

In this regard, it very often happens that a startup finds services that suit them, but that the services of a given provider are out of reach – because they cost too much.

Pulled back by this problem, they usually decide on a couple of solutions:

• Independent raising of infrastructure
• Raising the infrastructure of cloud providers whose services are the most affordable
• Abandoning the transition to the cloud

All these solutions carry with them a potential risk, at the root of which lies precisely the lack of knowledge and skills in working with cloud infrastructure.

Only a certain percentage of companies decide to seek support from professional cloud service partners, depending on how financially stable they are.

Do we have in-house resources to independently raise the infrastructure?

The majority of startup companies decide to take this step, precisely because of the simplicity of using the services of the cloud providers themselves. The company decides which provider is most suitable for their business and implements the infrastructure that meets the needs of the business on their own.

With this, they can independently choose the services they will use, adjust the resources according to their needs and control the infrastructure, so that they can make changes at any time, while maintaining control over consumption.

However, if the team working on building the infrastructure does not have enough experience and knowledge in the sphere of cloud business, this method can bring more harm than good.

How (that)?

Although seemingly simple services to use, all services in the cloud have their own specificities that can lead to the creation of unplanned costs.In addition, the second most common problem is poor infrastructure security configuration that leads to security breaches, data loss, and even vulnerability to malicious attacks.

PRO TIP

How can I make the most of the cloud provider’s services (at the lowest possible price)?

Being well informed about the benefits of a cloud provider is the key to establishing a good infrastructure with low costs. Although providers offer different performance levels of resources whose prices vary, for most resources there is also a free tier option that provides the use of resources with minimal features completely free of charge.

When it comes to smaller startup companies, free tier resources are usually quite sufficient even for a production environment, which reduces the cost of using services to a minimum. From the use of this type of resources, depending on the development of the business, you can switch to more advanced paid resources

More demanding startup companies do not find free tier resources sufficient, so the decision falls on stronger resources that bring with them higher costs.

However, these resources are often significantly stronger and more expensive than what they really need if they are not familiar with the concept of scaling.

Cloud resources are subject to scaling, which allows resources to become weaker and cheaper or stronger and more expensive to meet user needs, and scaling can be done at almost any time, depending on the type of resource.

Conclusion

The factors that influence the bad choice of cloud provider are:

• Looking at the financial aspect before the technical aspect
• Insufficient information about the range of cloud provider services
• A poorly designed plan for further infrastructure development
• Using outdated, unsupported and unsafe technologies when creating the application

There is no correct answer to the question of which cloud provider is best for startup companies. Each of the providers provides a different set of resources that a company should investigate in detail to find which provider provides its platform with functionality, good performance, availability and proper infrastructure implementation with minimal resource usage and maximum code compatibility.

By finding that combination and choosing the right type of resources or using loans, a startup company is on the perfect path to building a well-designed cloud infrastructure that can be further developed according to needs.