A Useful Case Study to Show the Flexibility of Public Cloud Technology

It is no longer news that public cloud technology provides an unparalleled flexibility and speed when compared with hosting IT infrastructures on rigid and slow traditional servers. The dream of every new start-up is to grow and expand its business operations. The projected period of growth might be in months or years. However, due to favorable business environments, some new companies suddenly find themselves expanding at an alarming rate that they will have to increase their server capacity, storage usage, and application of improved security systems. Samba Tech is a typical example to demonstrate that companies should adopt cloud technology in advance so as to be able to withstand sudden growth that may threaten the survival of their businesses. Samba Tech was founded in 2008, as an online video delivery, exploring the untapped market for this type of business in Brazil. And within three years of operations, serving some international media companies like Viacom, Bloomberg, and ESPN as a platform for delivering online video content to Latin American viewers, Samba’s revenue rose by a whopping 200 percent to about $2.8million. This could be described as a surprising growth level for a three-year-old start-up. Expectedly, Samba Tech began to face the serious threat to its business operations due to sudden increase in storage, server, security, and IT management requirements. The company initially had no plan to handle its IT systems; so, Samba started with a local hosting service with limited storage capacity, limited number of servers and poor IT management procedures which eventually led to poor video quality and dissatisfied customer services. To prevent a colossal collapse of the company, the management of Samba opted for public cloud, which not only provided flexibility in the area of scaling up and down the amount of storage usage, server capacity and the introduction of enhanced IT security systems, but also helped Samba to deal with sudden hike in IT infrastructure requirements, especially when additional processing power was needed. For instance, when there were popular sporting events on ESPN or new marketing campaigns on other channels that used Samba Tech, the adoption of public cloud afforded the company the unique opportunity of scaling up its IT systems (that were based in the cloud) to meet these new requirements at a faster rate and at a moderately affordable cost. And here is the final summation from Samba Chief Technology Officer, Fernando Campos: “It’s difficult to foresee when we will need additional capacity, but while traditional servers can take weeks to deploy, public cloud servers take less than 30 seconds. If the cloud technology wasn’t available, we couldn’t have grown as fast as we have.” This case study reveals two important facts about running any company:

• Huge growth may be unexpected and structurally demanding;
• There will be a hike in IT infrastructure requirement that may hinder smooth running of the company’s business operations.

But should companies wait until unexpected growth and expansion make their businesses virtually inoperable before adopting the public cloud technology? In the words of Samba’s Chief Technology Officer, a sudden change or growth is almost impossible to predict: hence, strategic managers should be able to safeguard the operations of their companies by migrating their IT structures to the cloud in anticipation for future growth. It is dangerous to allow a company with a rigid traditional hosting system to confront an unexpected increase in IT infrastructure requirements! If this situation is not properly managed, it could lead to the sudden collapse of the company and create poor customer satisfaction. Obviously, the public cloud technology does not only provide great opportunity for companies to expand at any rate they could, but also reduces the overhead cost of running these companies. This is basically in line with the new mantra of cost-efficiency, which is fast gaining currency in the corporate world.

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Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.   About the Guest Author: Jerry Olasakinju, a Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) degree holder, is a passionate researcher and writer whose interest in everything computing is unparalleled. He blogs about his literary works at http://jerryolasakinju.blogspot.jp/