In today’s global marketplace, few startups can thrive without expanding into new markets. Whether the business is setting its sights on continuous growth or positioning itself for eventual acquisition, early adoption of global expansion strategy ensures that companies can seamlessly accommodate growth and fluctuating demand. In fact, many investors prioritize readiness for global expansion as a key factor when evaluating funding opportunities.
While many large corporations may have the time and resources to expand globally before upgrading legacy systems, the vast majority of small to medium-sized businesses do not. Expanding into new markets leveraging existing legacy systems requires a great deal of investment and infrastructure. Those choosing not to make that investment will face latency and information exchange challenges in trying to serve geographically distant customers.
Some countries require that customer data remain inside the individual country’s borders. Many applications are not tailor-made for a particular region, and organizations will need to individually manage localized customer data, content delivery, and website design for language, currency, and date and time formatting issues. Businesses may also need to work with local government and logistical partners, requiring further customization. Finally, finding both the IT skills and the resources to test and launch new systems in a new market can be difficult.
In the long term, all these modifications often mean the company is now supporting two versions of the same code. By adding additional markets, startups are faced with potentially unsustainable IT costs due to the need to compile new logic into new codes, add new features in each market and then rebuild, manage downtime, and facilitate additional testing.
Small to medium-sized businesses choosing to use cloud computing to support their globalization efforts will have a much easier and less costly experience. Cloud computing solutions such as AWS have already established a global network of data centers and computing options around the world.
Start by choosing the data center closest to your customers to improve latency and user experience.The cloud computing infrastructure, code, and templates (like domain-specific language) are all focused on automating the replication of your existing assets appropriately for different regions. This means that initial expansion efforts and new future releases can be completed faster and more reliably, leading to a faster timeline for products and services.
Cloud computing also allows you to define and customize microservices by business unit in each domain, picking and choosing what you want to deploy. For example, if you have both a physical retail location as well as an online division, but you’re only expanding your online division to new markets, you can choose to only deploy online e-commerce related microservices and regional databases. This flexibility allows you to select the specific code and components to release in each market.
One IO Connect client based in the United States wanted to deploy its solution in a local region in the United Kingdom. By using AWS cloud computing, they rerouted and deployed all UK users to a local region in a matter of days. Now, they are primed to spin off region-specific brands in new areas across Europe, opening and routing new business requirements within minutes or even seconds.
Alongside supporting a more efficient and cost-effective expansion effort and laying the foundation for faster future product releases, cloud computing delivers various additional benefits.
First, a service such as AWS cloud computing can help address geo-latency issues. For example, if you have a problem with the region in one country, your customers may still be able to access your information from the closest Edge location.
Second, AWS keeps improving Edge technology, bringing more computing power closer to all its customers, addressing current concerns, and staying focused on creating best practices, from which you will continue to benefit.
Third, you will be able to replicate service level agreements better than the competition. For instance, you’ll have a built-in disaster recovery mechanism when you operate in the cloud, providing automatic load balancing from different areas.
Finally, cloud computing will support business continuity by quarantining problems. If your business is having technical problems in Asia, that problem can be contained in the blast radius of a smaller area. Other areas can be rolled back to earlier reliable versions while your IT team troubleshoots issues with a new feature or version.
Even if you’re currently on a legacy system, begin slowly by launching new applications in the cloud with the goal to migrate at a later date. Many mature startups that have proven to be successful in one market will be looking at expansion plans as a logical step in growth.
In addition, those businesses that hope to be acquired should also consider AWS and cloud computing because it will allow them to merge into a larger corporation more seamlessly. If the smaller business assets are already in the cloud, they will be easier to deploy, making your organization more appealing to acquire.
IO Connect Services is an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner, a certified MuleSoft® System Integrator Partner, a Salesforce Commerce Cloud Consulting Partner, and a member of the Datadog Partner Network. Our professionals have over 20 years of experience delivering complex technical solutions worldwide. We offer solutions in migration, DevOps, cloud native development, cloud solution architecture, security and compliance, and managed services. The company has achieved AWS competencies in retail, migration, and DevOps. We work relentlessly on establishing and maintaining trust with our clients and all business partners for successful long-term relationships.
Reach out to us today. Schedule a consultation to discuss whether Serverless Computing is the right solution for your organization.
