From Instagram's success: cloud computing accelerates entrepreneurs ' success

As early as 2010, someone kept asking me: "Cloud computing"? At that time, my answer was: foggy. Because at that time I also do not understand what this is, about its technical definition is not the focus of attention, and real products and services have not surfaced. When it comes to cloud computing, what matters most is what this technology can bring to me or my company.

And 2011 can be called as "the first year of cloud computing technology," in the years, a variety of "cloud" related concepts and products began overwhelming: cloud storage, cloud security, Cloud browser, cloud operating system, cloud voice and so on. When we can see real services and products that can be used, this technology begins to truly bring benefits to businesses and consumers. Let's take a look at what benefits the cloud brings.

The benefits of cloud computing

Benefit One: Save computational and storage resources

Now I can probably explain the current personal understanding of "cloud computing". First, "Cloud" and "end" (various hardware devices, such as PCs, mobile phones, etc.) correspond, "End" originally do is now integrated into the "cloud" do, that is, storage and computing; second, the connection between "cloud" and "end" is the Internet, through the Internet transmission and synchronization of computing, storage; third, for the user, do not need to know the "cloud" How it works. Believe that the first two points are well understood, on the 3rd, if you are not the provider of basic cloud services (such as Amazon, Google, Apple), you can boldly think it is a black box, just use its resources.

With this explanation, it's a good idea to understand the first benefits that cloud computing brings us, the original "end" to do can let "cloud" do, then the "end" of the computing power and storage space requirements must be reduced, in people to create, process, and storage of the demand for data increasingly vigorous today, have to say, this is a huge revolution , it frees up computing power and storage space.

To give a specific example, when Zuckerberg created Facebook in his dorm, the upfront money was spent mainly on servers, so the upfront cost-control approach for Facebook was to effectively estimate the growth rate of the data load, This determines the number of servers that need to be purchased at what time. Today, if a website startup team uses cloud computing services, it does not have to consider the problem of buying servers, how much rent to spend, avoid the idle resources and waste, very effective to save the initial start-up costs.

Benefits II: Companies using cloud services do not need a dedicated team to be responsible for technology and operations

The benefits are in fact related to the 3rd of the above mentioned "cloud" understanding, cloud services is only a powerful tool, and its use of technology and data center operations owned by the cloud services provider is responsible for, without users worry. At present, the Internet services are becoming more and more fragmented and platform-wide, and the advent of cloud computing services makes it possible to concentrate on product development and operation.

Benefit Three: Cloud Computing front-end application solves the problem of user cross-platform and data backup

The so-called cloud front-end application of the typical representative is the network disk, the use of data center storage capabilities, so that enterprise users or individual users can use any terminal anytime, anywhere access to their own cloud of information (almost all format files). In the era of multiple terminals, this Cross-platform service is particularly important, through the network, a number of different systems terminals share the same data, can be synchronized collaboration. In addition, data backup is the work that both individuals and businesses need to do to prevent important files from being lost.

To sum up, the landing of cloud computing services has brought benefits to at least three parties: first, large data center owners, with centralized processing advantages, effectively reduce the idle and waste of computing and storage resources; second, SMEs or entrepreneurs, reduce the operation of the enterprise hardware and related operating costs; third, end users, facilitates the processing, storage and backup of its information.

The key factor of Instagram success: the support of cloud computing technology

Not long ago, Facebook bought the 2010 start-up company Instagram with 1 billion dollars, which has aroused great repercussions in the Chinese entrepreneur team and mobilized everyone's enthusiasm for entrepreneurship. A brief review of its development: October 2010, landing Apple app store;2011 year February 25, released immediately api;2011 year September, the user breakthrough tens of millions of April 3, 2012, Android version of the Google play;2012 years April 10, Facebook bought Instagram at a price of 1 billion dollars.

Instagram is mainly a photo-sharing interactive community, the most fundamental feature is a photo of the social network, photo shooting, location services, image sharing function is its main component. Our success is summed up in the following four factors: products, a single product to achieve the ultimate, users, first of all, based on high-end user cooperation, cooperation, open minded to expand the market, industry, cloud computing technology support. Here we focus on the last factor, the support of cloud computing technology.

Less than a year into the App Store, Instagram has more than 10 million users, and the number of photos uploaded by users every day is tens, which is pretty fast for a start-up, while growing fast is the need to store and compute resources. Users upload photos are stored in the cloud server, the storage requirements for the server is constantly changing, if not using cloud computing services, then Instagram can only buy enough servers to meet peak user access and photo storage (the heart of a friend can calculate the cost of the server itself), At low values, idle server resources are wasted. And cloud computing services are solving the big problem of Instagram. Instagram has rented Amazon's cloud computing resources from the start, and Amazon's huge data center has been the backbone of its growth, how much resources it needs to deploy in real time, and to pay Amazon for the actual use of resources. This kind of resource pays much like the current electricity resources pay-power plant centralized energy generation, consumers on demand, and finally according to the actual use of cost settlement.

For entrepreneurs, the need not to buy their own servers, research storage and computing, maintenance and operation of their own cloud computing data centers, not only reduce the cost of hardware purchases, the cost of human resources is also significantly reduced--instagram 16-person team service 30 million users- That's why many of America's most successful businesses are born in college dormitories or garages, and there are only a few entrepreneurial teams. Before 2011 at home, by the infrastructure environment constraints, entrepreneurs can not enjoy the entrepreneurial environment, many of the entrepreneurial team's products due to lack of funds or resources constraints and aborted. But as Amazon's cloud services enter China and domestic companies in the field of cloud computing actively, the domestic entrepreneurial environment has improved, cloud computing service leasing can help entrepreneurs to better focus on their own areas.

Cloud computing Services Worry: security

Security is a problem that users of cloud computing services are currently paying close attention to. Now that computing and storage are in the data center of the cloud, and do not need their own operations and maintenance, then there will inevitably be involved in two aspects of security issues: the security of data resources, that is, whether the cloud services provider will use or disclose the data resources in their data center, the second is the security of the data center, That is, a failure causes the user's data to be corrupted.

Security issues also plague the providers and consumers of cloud services. The first type of security problem abroad is easier to solve than at home because cloud computing providers are not involved in front-end application development (at least for now, Amazon, Google and Apple). Simply put, there is no direct conflict of interest between these companies and the entrepreneurs who develop front-end applications, they only provide such infrastructure. Since there is no direct conflict of interest, large companies have no reason and power to use the data. In China, it may not be so, the division of labor is not clear, both when the referee and want to be an athlete's company is difficult to be trusted. This part of the market nurturing and normative formation is being pushed forward, this part of the contradictions will be provided by the cloud of the basic services of the large enterprise platform solution. As for the second type of security problem, it can be solved by a number of technical means, the general cloud service provider will take this into account.

The irreversible trend: the era of cloud services is accelerating

In the near future, cloud services will become an on-demand base service as much as electricity. At home, from the "cloud computing" concept of the rise, to the second half of 2011 many cloud-based services, the use of cloud services landing products into people's vision, but a few years of time. In the 2011, many people have experienced the convenience of cloud computing, it has begun to slowly from the "illusory" to come out. And, as domestic enterprises began to build cloud computing platform, such as Alibaba's Aliyun, Baidu's easy platform and the three major operators of the cloud computing Center, although they provide different services, but for many small and medium-sized enterprises, entrepreneurs, developers and individual users to provide cloud services, Become an important force to promote the growth of the entire cloud computing infrastructure.

Figure 1 The proportion of decision makers who have used or are experimenting with cloud computing

As you can see in Figure 1, enterprise decision-makers in various countries are already actively using cloud computing services, the United States as the Internet leader in the field, its development has often led the direction of the industry as a whole, we also have reason to believe that, as the domestic cloud services industry gradually mature, its service penetration rate will also grow rapidly.

From the Internet industry as a whole, the improvement of the basic service environment will provide entrepreneurs with a better entrepreneurial environment, the development of cloud computing will inevitably accelerate the pace of entrepreneurs, so that they have more focused energy to create wonderful products, applications and services, thus speeding up the development of the Internet industry as a whole, Ultimately improve people's Internet use experience.

The author Shen Yu, who joined the group in March 2011 and is currently a mobile Internet analyst, is mainly responsible for research in areas including intelligent terminals, mobile marketing, mobile power, mobile payments, cloud computing and so on. So far has written 10 copies related industry reports, served dozens of internet companies, in the field of mobile internet research has a wealth of experience

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)