In this age of intense competition, 8KMiles has pioneered a unique
outsourcing model by leveraging the cloud. Aptly called
‘cloudsourcing’, the model allows firms to get
on-demand access to dependable remote talent and
infrastructure.
While large organizations have the luxury of inviting hundreds of
IT companies for bidding for IT-based projects, small companies do
not have the required knowledge or
choice. Due to their small budgets, most of these companies are not
on the radar of large companies. The firm believes that there is a
huge opportunity in addressing the unique
needs of SMBs, by using the cloud.
"The cloud has helped in leveling the playing field for
companies such as ours to build businesses and compete in the
global marketplace. We are now able to offer to businesses across
the world an end-to-end virtual sourcing model solution in the
cloud"
- Harish Ganesan, Co- founder and CTO, 8KMiles
“We provide a distributed development platform that blends
a global talent marketplace with collaboration tools and cloud
infrastructure. This allows businesses to hire technology talent
on-demand, and have them work on cloud-based infrastructure using
our pre-configured remote desktops and servers for development and
testing,” explains Harish Ganesan, Co- founder and Chief
Technology Officer, 8KMiles.
The 8KMiles platform provides SMBs access to verified quality
talent, in addition to pre-built infrastructure delivered using the
cloud. SMBs, can for example, build their own testing and
development teams and collaborate with them. For example, a concept
called Projectspace helps remote providers work as if they were in
the same office with video conferencing, document sharing and
status tracking tools. The firm has been one of the early adopters
of AWS, and has achieved a lot of flexibility by moving its
application to AWS.
8KMiles’s Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) also uses AWS
extensively to deliver remote desktops and test/ development
environments for globally distributed teams. “Our core
offering, 8KMiles’ VCE provides pre-configured remote
desktops and servers on demand. We wanted the whole desktop/server
delivery to be automated, just in time with almost zero upfront
infrastructure investment, with the ability to support a wide range
of customizable technology stacks,” explains Ganesan.
The firm moved its entire web application to AWS in early 2008 and
realized a direct 40 percent reduction in its monthly recurring
costs. The usage of AWS infrastructure cloud platform combined with
automation has substantially reduced the load on its IT
infrastructure team, enabling it to focus its time on the core
business.
“By using AWS, we were able to try out proof-of-concepts and
experiment our ideas very quickly and easily, and pay only for what
we use. We were also able to bring in scalability and elasticity at
the early stages of our web application design by utilizing
the on-demand pricing model of AWS, accelerating our
speed-to-market that
helped us achieve our business success much more quickly,”
says Ganeshan explaining on how the cloud has helped his company
scale rapidly.
The success of a company like 8KMiles is also a case in point to
understand how a technology like cloud computing can help even
small companies compete against the big players.
“The AWS cloud has helped in leveling the playing field for
companies such as ours to build businesses and compete in the
global marketplace. We are now able to offer to businesses across
the world our innovative end-to-end Virtual Sourcing Model solution
in the cloud. Any business can come to 8KMiles.com to hire the
technology talent anytime they need, and access cloud-based
infrastructure for their development or testing needs almost
instantly. Once their applications are ready, 8KMiles can help them
seamlessly deploy their applications and go live on the AWS cloud.
All of this captures the essence of the cloud – that is being
on-demand, pay-as-you-use, infinitely scalable and more crucially,
allowing you to focus on core competencies and innovate
quickly,” explains Ganeshan on how the cloud can truly
transform business models.