Starting a business can be exciting, but daunting. You know your idea is worth sharing with others, but how do you fund and promote that idea? Where do you start? And once you start, how do you keep your momentum going?
Fortunately, there are available resources, and one of the most helpful resources is Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS is a cloud services platform that offers over 50 services to help you build, launch, and scale your business, no matter what stage it’s in. You can have on-demand access to all these sources and pay for them as you go. So whether you’re a recent startup or a fully funded business, here are some ways you can utilize AWS to help boost your business.
- Power your startup: First thing’s first. If you’re hoping to move forward with a brand-new startup, look into the startup services AWS offers, including AWS Activate. This program provides training and hands-on labs to give you the resources you need to grow your startup. It also offers AWS Support and AWS Promotional Credit as you begin to fund your business, and it can connect you with a global network of developers and entrepreneurs that have used AWS successfully so you can get tips and share your own ideas. Airbnb is an example of a startup that has implemented AWS to move forward. Using storage, management, and data tools, Airbnb supports its growing traffic and scales its site efficiently.
- Develop your website: AWS can help you boost your online presence. Use AWS Elastic Beanstalk to create your own web app by selecting a name and platform for your environment. You can also host your website on AWS itself with the option of running it with or without a web server. AWS also allows you to name and register your own domain for your website. McCormick is just one example of how a company used AWS to expand their web presence. Using AWS, McCormock was able to support web traffic and launch their FlavorPrint platform.
- Create mobile applications: So now your web presence is up and running—but what about your phone presence? AWS can take care of it. Configure features for your apps by developing user authentication, data storage, backend logic, push notifications, content delivery, and analytics. And after creating your apps, AWS also allows you to test your apps on real devices so you can improve app performance. With these services, companies like EasyTaxi have utilized AWS to host its mobile apps. EasyTaxi can now support 300,000 requests for taxis per minute and store billions of indexed documents.
- Expand your storage: Storing data can get tricky, especially if you feel like you’re always running out of room and money to store information conveniently and securely. Fortunately, AWS offers storage services that give you access to whatever amount of storage you need. You can control who has access to the storage, and you can use the services to build big data, analytics, transcoding, and archive applications. These services were especially helpful for Spotify. For a company that adds over 20,000 tracks a day to its catalogue, storage solutions like Amazon S3 expand storage quickly and allow the infrastructure to adjust to user demand.
- Build big data: As your company grows, you may need a big data application to support the volume, velocity, and variety of your data. Fortunately, AWS offers services that allow you to quickly scale any big data application including data warehousing, clickstream analytics, fraud detection, recommendation engines, serverless computing, and internet-of-things processing. The best part is you can access as many of these resources as you need and only pay for what you end up using. Netflix, a company that streams thousands of movies and television shows on-demand, uses AWS to deploy thousands of servers and terabytes of storage within minutes.
With these services and additional resources on AWS, you’ll no longer feel like starting a business is daunting. AWS can transform your business, great or small, into an extraordinary company that functions easily and efficiently—and all at a low cost. Sign up today for a free account at https://aws.amazon.com/ so you can experiment, innovate, and discover.