A new approach to IT has emerged which offers small and medium enterprises (SMEs) a faster track to success than traditional legacy systems.
Cloud computing is based on the concept that IT should largely be delivered as a service over the Internet. Documents, emails and other data will be stored online or ‘in the cloud’, making them accessible in real-time from any PC, laptop or mobile device.
Cloud computing offers benefits to start-up businesses, particularly the opportunity to do ‘more for less’ and to help streamline their cash flows. To run business applications, start-ups would previously have needed costly high-spec PCs and servers in-house. Internal networks would also have required investment and management.
Cloud applications, in contrast, need no more infrastructure than an internet connection and can even work wirelessly on a range of mobile devices. This capability enables companies to greatly reduce upfront capital expense - a key consideration for any new business. Critically, it also allows start-ups to concentrate on the growth of their core business.
How CloudApps has benefited
Carbon solutions provider CloudApps is a case in point. A key business innovation partner which enables enterprises, including several FTSE 100 companies, to measure, monitor and engage with their employees to dramatically reduce carbon emissions, CloudApps’ chances of success in its early years have been significantly enhanced by not needing to worry about the underlying technology it relies on.
The company has benefited from the ability to use Force.com, an enterprise cloud computing platform from salesforce.com, developing its applications on the platform and so dramatically reducing the upfront capital required to get the business ‘on its feet’, delivering early customer successes much faster than with a traditional on-premise platform.
In fact, CloudApps estimates that, with the help of Force.com, it can build applications about five times as quickly and at half the cost of traditional software platforms. This has enabled the company to innovate and stay well ahead of its competitors in terms of its development curve. Having delivered the salesforce.com Winter ’10 release of its Cloud Apps Carbon solution in January 2010, the company has already iterated rapidly through two additional releases in Spring and Summer.
The platform has also enabled CloudApps to achieve high levels of business agility, allowing it to rapidly adapt its solution to reflect recent changes in the UK Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) legislation, for example.
Collaborating for success
CloudApps clearly benefits extensively from Force.com’s ability to support rapid yet cost-effective growth; in addition to tremendous business gains due to the innovation that the platform delivers. While CloudApps is focused on guiding its customers through the carbon journey - helping them comply with global climate change legislation, reduce operating costs and enhance their brand value - it has the peace of mind of knowing that salesforce.com is tirelessly delivering continuous platform innovation.
Social collaboration and online community innovations such as Salesforce Ideas and Chatter are helping CloudApps to deliver a unique emission management solution to its customers. Salesforce Ideas allows companies to tap their community of employees, customers and partners to crowdsource, identify, rank, iterate and implement unique carbon reduction ideas.
Salesforce Chatter is a new platform capability that drives collaboration and effective teamwork. Through social networking capabilities, such as feeds, status updates, user preferences for following key team members, documents and applications, expertise is identified in real-time and projects are matured more quickly and efficiently. With Chatter,CloudApps customers can connect internally and collaborate on information securely to promote the common goal of reducing overall carbon emissions.
Positive future ahead
Clearly, new business start-ups can potentially gain extensive benefits from using cloud computing solutions rather than traditional IT systems and software in their first few, often difficult, months. But these benefits are now helping CloudApps well beyond its initial start-up phase. Over time, cloud computing tools and techniques have been key in helping the company deliver speed and agility in its day to day operations.
In particular, they have enabled the company to get to market quickly, delivering a rapid, initial build of its carbon management application and then to quickly add more and more functionality, driving customer engagement and success. With increasing numbers of companies now using CloudApps web-based software to help measure and cut their carbon footprints, this trend looks set to continue long into the future.
