Cloud Based Technologies To Keep in Your Toolbox as an Entrepreneur
Launching your very own startup is no easy task, and no online article will give you the step-by-step path to successful business ownership and prosperity. Luckily, there are hundreds of tools to help with your business venture at your literal fingertips, only a Google search away. What articles online can give you is the knowledge you may lack about all the cheap, efficient and valuable technological tools that are out there to help start and scale your business.
Just as valuable, is the advice you can get from individuals who have dived into the unpredictable waters of entrepreneurship. I got to chat with the Chief Technology Officer of Keywork Labs Inc., a startup company right here in Downtown Calgary.
Stuart Smith, CTO of Keyworks, with his decades of experience in IT, along with his partners, have built a successful technology strategy and services firm. With the collective expertise of the founding team, Keyworks offers unique strategic solutions to accelerate their clients’ businesses through technology and innovation. Starting in 2014, and now with offices in Calgary as well as Australia, Keyworks has become more than a success story, but has transitioned into a global company.
We’ve all heard it before, the 5-year milestone is a major one for startups, it basically means you’ve made it past the hole that swallows up most entrepreneurs. I wanted to find out what technological tools aided the founding team in building and scaling up their business.
“When it comes to productivity and tool sets, there is really not a need to recreate the wheel and try to build your own.”
With a massive online inventory of technological tools meant to help entrepreneurs, the need to hire individuals with strong technical backgrounds, or the capital needed for technological infrastructure is no longer necessary for a lot of startups. My key takeaway from my interview with Stuart was this: as with any aspiring start-up, managing your limited resources is key. The most valuable resource for an entrepreneur, your time, should be utilized in the best way possible. Keep reading to learn about some cheap and easy to use technological tools that will let you focus on the most important thing: your business.
“The first thing that we decided as a group when it came to our technology is that we wanted to be 100% in the cloud.”
The power of the cloud lies in its ability to reduce the time, and associated high costs for startups, to buy and maintain servers internally as well as the related data centre hardware. Below are three main tools that can help you make the most of all that the cloud has to offer, all three of which is/has been utilized by Keyworks in their 5 years.
GoDaddy.com
As the world’s largest internet domain name registrar, with 18 million customers around the globe, GoDaddy offers individuals an easy and affordable way to start, grow and run their business online. Although their main business is domain names (77 million domains being managed in 2019), they also host over 8.5 million websites; and you can even build your own website with them directly through GoCentral.
Their website-builder utility is available through monthly plans:
Here are just a few perks that come with their website-builder:
- Online payments and client management tools.
- Setting up text and email notification tools directly through your site to your customers.
- Built-in Online Appointments feature.
- Search Engine Optimization that automatically reviews your site and optimizes it for search engines like Google®, Yahoo!® and Bing®.
Microsoft Office 365
As part of the Microsoft Office software suite, Office 365 is a line of products offered through monthly or annual subscriptions. As well, all Office 365 plans include automatic updates with the latest features and security changes. The subscription also offers cloud-based SaaS products for business environments such as SharePoint.
SharePoint
- Sharing of files, news, data, and resources in an iterative manner (saved to SkyDrive automatically, no desktop storage necessary).
- Cross platform (PCs, Macs, mobile devices).
- Customizable dynamic team sites to streamline your team’s work.
- Secure and effortless collaboration with team members inside and outside your organization.
Pricing:
Amazon Web Services
Perhaps the biggest name in cloud computing in the recent years has been Amazon Web Services (AWS). Along with Google and IBM, many major technology companies have seen the value in cloud services; with Amazon as the frontier in 2006. Used by major companies such as Netflix, BMW, Adobe Systems and many more, AWS is a globally trusted cloud service provider.
Start free & pay as you go
What is unique about AWS is that you pay for it like you would for utilities such as water or electricity; you pay for exactly how much you use and for as long as you use it. With over 90 services offered, the pricing is unique to each and is time or request based (per request/per minute/per hour). Signing up is easy, you just need a phone number, credit or debit card and a Microsoft account.
Some products that are free (dependent on the number of monthly requests):
- App Service (create cross platform and device apps using PHP and Node.js)
- Functions (AWS Lambda function allow you to process events through serverless computing)
- Machine Learning Studio (build your own cloud-based machine learning solutions)
- Virtual Networks (create your own Virtual Private Cloud of private networks)
You can get the full list of products that always remain free, as long as the number of requests made monthly does not exceed the preset threshold, click here.
Some products that are free for the first 12 months:
- Linux/Windows Virtual Machines
- File Storage (5GB)
- SQL Database (250GB)
- Bandwidth (data transfer)
Hot startups such as Airbnb, Uber, Lyft, Pinterest, Dropbox and Slack have all used AWS to utilize the power of the cloud and quickly scale.
Not that long ago, companies needed dedicated teams for the configuration, running and maintaining of servers, which made it difficult for businesses to scale up and focus on their business. Especially for startups, the lack of human capital and funding made this a major roadblock.
Amazon Web Services understands that the new serverless era is especially appealing to entrepreneurs, and as such, they have a program called AWS Activate that is meant to provide startups with the resources and tools they need to get started on AWS. It includes perks such as the following to help get you over the learning curve to get the most out of Amazon’s cloud services:
- Technical training
- Self-paced labs
- AWS on-call support
- Collaboration with a community of other startups on AWS
To read more about AWS Activate and how it can help you with your startup, visit AWS Activate.
Undoubtedly, AWS and the cloud are here to stay; and will only get more integrated in the lives of business owners in the next few years. Staying on top of the latest technologies, and how you can best utilize them to grow and scale your business is crucial for any entrepreneur who wishes to have a success story such as Keyworks’.
A special thank you to Keywork Labs Inc. and Stuart Smith for their openness and willingness in helping me with this project.
