Nov
30
Get your head out of your Ass and into the Cloud
We at Bright Green Projects love the cloud. In fact, we couldn’t be where we are today without it. Our company offers a hosted Agile Project Management tool. 12 months ago, we were a team of ex Management Consultants with a bunch of ideas. Today we run a truly global company with employees distributed throughout the UK/Australia, and customers from all over the world. How did we do it in just 12 months you ask?
From day 1, we made the strategic decision to be cloud only. All of our servers and capital infrastructure are outsourced. We have no central office and the only hardware we physically own is our laptops. This decision was made not only for cost reasons, but to save time and increase flexibility. We wanted a quick, efficient, reliable solution to get us through the start-up period, that could be instantly scaled up 1000 times for when we went to market.
Here are some steps we followed from inception to become a completely cloud only company:
1.) We set up Google Apps for all of our productivity applications such as email and document management. In less than half a day we had the full capabilities of an exchange server for a fraction of the cost. Integration with the iPhone meant we could access email/calendar/contact lists anywhere at any time of the day.
2.) It became apparent that we needed a CRM system to keep track of our prospects and customers. We signed up for a Salesforce account, and started feeding the prospects in. With cloud computing, enterprise applications such as this are instantly accessible by all.
3.) With an email, document management and CRM system in place, we needed a cheap way of phoning people internationally. Skype was the perfect choice, allowing us to make cheap sales calls and also collaborate internally. The video conferencing capabilities meant we could easily and efficiently conduct meetings with our developers and designers on the other side of the world.
4.) When it came time to start build of our product, we needed a scalable infrastructure, a detailed security plan, and a disaster recovery strategy. We pretty quickly found a data center that had an international reputation and satisfied all 3 of these requirements. As a bonus, they also offset their carbon emissions, which was inline with our company ethos. Their tiered plans enabled pricing efficiency during our development phase, and instant scalability for our test and release phases.
5.) Towards the end of our product development phase, we needed to get word out there about our product, and establish an initial group of beta testers. We made the choice to go with WordPress, because it allowed us to manage our website and blog in one. We used blogs to attract prospects and recorded their details using our website. In just 3 weeks, we managed to sign up over 600 global prospects for our pilot program!
6.) After a very successful pilot period, we launched our product to the global public and soon had customers throughout North America, the UK, Australia and New Zealand. We needed a way of conducting online meetings with our customers, as an alternative to the expensive travel associated with face to face communication. We used web conferencing tool GoToMeeting, enabling us to line up back to back, cross-continental meetings, all before lunchtime.
7.) As soon as we launched, we started using our own agile tool to manage requirements, risks, issues and actions. We had a steady stream of enhancement requests coming in from customers that needed prioritizing and assigning to our global team members. This enabled our distributed development team to collaborate and ensured they were always working off the same page.
The actions listed above have enabled us to quickly and cost effectively grow over 12 months. Every part of our business can be dynamically scaled up or down, allowing us to compete on a global scale with companies 100 times our size. This would not have been possible just a few years ago!! 2009 has seen the biggest increase in adoption of cloud computing than ever before. Cloud computing is no longer just a buzzword, it’s here to stay, and if you’re not there yet, then get your head out of your ass.
I’d like to know why you are wary of Google apps?