David vs Goliath: is cloud computing the new slingshot?
October 5, 2012
Grazed from The Guardian. Author: Editorial Staff.
That software is everywhere is so commonly accepted that it hardly needs repeating. Take, for example, Getaround. To consumers it’s a marketplace where the car-having and car-needing come together to work out short-term rentals mano a mano. But the people at Getaround aren’t running a car rental company – they’re running a software company. And a small one, at that. They, along with lots of other small firms and start-ups, are competing against giants in their fields: established, mature, enterprise-type companies that not only have market share, but the capital and cash resources that come with it. We’ll call them Goliath.
So what’s a young David-like up-start to do, armed only with a brilliant idea, raw talent and a willingness to put in long hours? How do they deliver quickly, and on a shoe-string budget? They reach for the slingshot in their back pocket: cloud computing…
If there’s one lesson you couldn’t miss from our recent tech boom and bust cycles, it’s that burn rate matters. So it’s no surprise to see small new firms embrace the lean philosophy. And we’re now at a point where that philosophy can extend to software development tools of all stripes: issues trackers, build servers, code repositories, even integrated development environments (IDEs) are now available as pay-as-you-go services…
Read more from the source @ http://www.guardian.co.uk/media-network/media-network-blog/2012/oct/05/david-goliath-cloud-computing?newsfeed=true