Idyllic Software is a web development company using Ruby on Rails
for startups, small businesses, digital agencies and software
development companies. The company was formed in 2009. Being a
startup, the company wanted to keep the expenses low, and more
importantly flexible. Thus, like most of the startups and SMBs,
Idyllic Software adopted cloud solution.
Idyllic Software is using EC2 cloud services from the time the
company started operations. Presently, it is using virtual servers,
S3 storage and cloud front services from Amazon.
The web development company has wide range of services living on
the cloud. It has hosted websites, blogs and applications --
ranging from job sites to billing applications and e-commerce sites
to Facebook applications on the cloud. It has rented 11 servers for
different projects from Amazon. The company feels that renting a
dedicated server from a data center would have been more expensive
and less flexible.
Cloud: Flexible and cost-effective
The key reasons for the company to take the plunge in the cloud
were the flexibility and cost savings it offers. With cloud, the
company can pay as it goes without any long-term commitments.
Idyllic Software uses Amazon EC2 instances, which are very easy to
scale up or down. Also, it can quickly bring up a few servers just
like the ones it has, in no time. The major
benefits of the cloud that the company experiences are ease of
usage, flexibility, complete control and cost savings.
Jinesh Parekh, Founder of
Idyllic Software said, “Since, we are a small business, our
expenses are also small. Thus, we wanted a solution that would help
us to reduce our cost and cloud was the answer. We have experienced
huge cost saving by using cloud. Also, based on the need we can
easily scale the solution, save time, money and hassle of
maintaining it.”
He mentioned, for instance, the cost incurred per virtual server
(medium sized) ranges from Rs 2,000 to Rs 2,500, which includes
usage of S3 storage services and their cloud front content delivery
network. If Idyllic Software were to rent a decent sized dedicated
server, the costs would have been at least Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000.
Of course the cost fluctuates, based on the usage.
Security is not a concern
Idyllic Software’s applications and even their
client’s applications are deployed on Amazon cloud but still
the company is not concerned about security on the cloud. The
company believes that the concern of security is no different than
how it would be on dedicated servers. Both require the same
planning and due diligence on the company’s part.
According to Parekh, clouds are like data stores, which have
same control on security. The company’s clients have billing
and e-commerce applications on the cloud. And till date none of its
client has ever faced any problem on cloud.
He said, “There is no difference between how you secure
data on the cloud as compared to how you do it on dedicated
servers. Both require you to trust the provider and employ best
practices to achieve the result.”
The example of Idyllic Software shows how cloud is critical for
startups and SMBs as it enables them to kick-start their operations
at lowest possible cost.