Not so long ago, companies that launched new and exciting products were said to have the ‘first-mover advantage’. However, given today’s dynamic market conditions, merely launching a new product or service does not imply that an organization will sustain; it is imperative that these organizations have a long term strategy in place for them to be successful.
In fact, according to
Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, an organization’s ability to rapidly scale a digital product or service is much more important than being first to the market or launching a new service. He provides the example of Facebook, which successfully grew its businesses to a breath-taking size in just six years.
Hoffman’s view is entirely correct and can be taken further.
Role of innovation for modern businesses
Technology lies at the heart of today’s businesses and having a digital and mobile application to front end transactions with customers is critical for businesses to succeed. Starting from a fashion business to an automobile manufacturing company, almost every company needs an app today. Digital applications are transforming the way companies function and are revolutionizing customer services in these sectors.
It's important to focus on digital innovation to remain relevant and competitive in the market today. In fact organizations need to embrace a philosophy of continual innovation. It is critical for organizations to proactively examine their existing product lines and business models and be sure that they are able to scale them with ease.
Role of Cloud to scale up businesses
The rise of technologies such as cloud computing helps businesses not only to scale up their operations but also make innovation, a part of their DNA. Cloud provides a strategic advantage to companies that have to constantly build, design and manufacture new products and services. Organizations can leverage cloud to launch these services without worrying about capex to to set up IT infrastructure every time. They can rent the IT solutions for the required duration without having to lock money in a go.
But all Cloud solutions are not the same and thus organizations are required to understand their business requirements and implement the right cloud solution in order to reap maximum business benefits.
Staying relevant with continuous innovation
If the need is to rapidly build and scale applications, organizations should look at platform as a Service (PaaS). PaaS provides organizations ease of use, price flexibility and scalability which was earlier impossible.
With PaaS, the time taken by organizations to develop applications rapidly decreases thereby reducing the resources and toolsets needed for a development environment. In the past, such resources and toolsets needed to be procured, set up and managed by the IT department and this process would take many months to set up and execute. However, PaaS eliminates this cumbersome process.
PaaS is also cost effective. Few businesses would want to invest in the storage, infrastructure and database resources needed for application development. With PaaS, organizations can take whatever resources they need for any given stage of development. In the event that a business wants to rapidly evaluate an application, they can do so by experimenting their application in the cloud by using pre-existing toolsets to build and test their applications through virtualized cloud resources. If this is successful, organizations can easily scale up either by buying more capacity from cloud providers or moving the application to their on premise or private cloud resources.
The most significant capability of PaaS solutions is its ability to act as a bridge between public and private clouds and on premise systems. The right PaaS solutions are compatible with both and therefore can act as a binding agent to on premise and cloud solutions in hybrid cloud infrastructures with a single unified view.
Therefore, while PaaS not only allows businesses to innovate, but also remain relevant by helping them continually build on their ideas to win over new customers. If businesses hit on a winning web or mobile application they are able to scale it rapidly and make the most of the business opportunity. This ensures that regardless of whether they are first to market or last, if they have a service that customers want to use, they are able to leverage solutions such as cloud to build solutions rapidly and scale their overall business through technology.
Mitesh is the the VP - Sales Consulting, Oracle India
