Himanshu PatelStart-ups need help to take on the Big Boys as they deliver business disruption by providing newer services and products. With lean internal teams, start-ups need to focus on core business innovation and do so very quickly — technology is key here. Agility aligned with an unwavering focus on innovation is a key catalyst to disruption.
And that’s exactly where IBM’s Bluemix™ platform plays the perfect matchmaker for start-ups because it not only facilitates the ‘entrepreneurs everywhere’ principle but also enables start-ups to focus on innovative applications to solve complex business challenges, leaving behind any infrastructure related issues. Reducing application development time from months to minutes catalyzing disruption.
Earlier, start-ups found it extremely tough to build enterprise-grade applications with the required scalability, resiliency and speed. But thanks to the powerful Bluemix platform, start-ups in India are now providing enterprise-grade applications for giants in industries ranging from IT/ITeS to energy to manufacturing, BFSI, transportation, media and more. In fact, an Enterprise Strategy Group survey reported in mid-2015 that, Bluemix was the most-used PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service). The survey results also showed that the adoption of Bluemix was growing 10x faster on average than the adoption of other PaaS providers. Yipeedo is once such start up currently on Bluemix for its application development. The mobile only platform is helping urban city dwellers discover things to do in cities based on a user’s taste and preferences.
What’s even more interesting is that the giants themselves are learning from start-ups and using ‘Bluemix’ to leverage start-up agility and innovation.
Take India’s largest private bank, ICICI Bank. The bank wants to deliver the ultimate customer experience. So ICICI Bank is currently organizing the ICICI Appathon by inviting start-ups to participate. “There is a shift in consumer preference wherein they want innovative solutions on the go. We want to broad base and leverage the innovative ideas and exceptional talent in our developers, technopreneurs and technology start-ups,” says Ms Chanda Kochhar, MD & CEO, ICICI Bank. Similarly, Tech Mahindra has currently trained close to 5000 of their developers on Bluemix.
And soon, Bluemix Local, the latest flavour of Bluemix will come to India to enable enterprises to gain from the power of Bluemix. It will be delivered as-a-service behind a firewall and leverages existing infrastructure in a modern private cloud platform. It will provide a powerful hybrid cloud offering in combination with on premise infrastructure.
So, whether a business — from a start-up to a large enterprise — wants to leverage Bluemix in a public, dedicated or local manner, IBM is delivering Bluemix in a way that is designed to bridge and extend existing systems and data into the cloud.
