Startup companies are sprouting everywhere like mushrooms in a forest during the rainy season. And while this is good for keeping markets competitive, it can be difficult to think that behind these startups are real people with big dreams. And while these dreams may differ from person to person, the unifying fact is that they are all taking a risk.

Running a startup has its own set of responsibilities that are often difficult to handle. Markets are incredibly oversaturated at this point and it’s going to be difficult to stand out. As if market saturation isn’t enough of a hurdle to, well, hurdle, managing operational expenses is another aspect that’s definitely going to test the sanity of business owners.

Let’s establish the fact that the point of any business is to create profit. This is true, no matter what narrative they opt to adopt. And, another fact is that in order to successfully grow a business, business owners need to be able to maximize profit and minimize expenses. This is especially important for a business that’s only starting out. And well, as you may have already guessed from the title, cloud computing is easily the holy grail for small businesses.

What Exactly is Cloud Computing?

Cloud computing refers to anything that involves delivering hosted services over the Internet. These services are broadly divided into three categories: Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). A prime example of this can be seen in the form of Amazon Web Services, which is easily one of the most popular cloud computing services. This AWS Podcast should come in handy if you want to delve deeper into it.

So, What Makes the Cloud So Useful to New Businesses?

Three words: scalability, pricing, and security.

Scalability is one of the biggest challenges in running a business, namely the need for physical hardware. This aspect of infrastructure can easily prove to be an expensive investment and not all businesses start out with the sufficient resources. This challenge is further compounded when there is a need to scale up or scale down. However, with cloud computing, this challenge is essentially negated because your computers are virtualized. This makes it very easy to scale up or down because all you really need to do is to adjust your bandwidth.

When it comes to pricing, aside from the need to purchase physical hardware, another resource drain on businesses is the fact that you’re going to need to maintain your business infrastructure. This too can be an expense that newer businesses may not be able to sustain. AWS allows businesses to have an infrastructure as needed. Business owners only pay for the time that the service is in actual use. The moment that a service session is ended, the billing for the service also pauses.