The vast majority of startups are often on shoestring budgets in their early days — Bahraini startups are no exceptions on that front. Of course, making huge upfront investments in legacy and on-premise infrastructure is just not feasible under those circumstances.
So how do they get around such budget constraints?
Well, no price for guessing that the answer lies in managed cloud services — such as the one in offering by Amazon, through Amazon Web Services.
On that count, Bahraini startups are at an advantageous position given that they have the regional unit of the world’s dominant cloud services platform operating right from their backyard. Yes — we‘re talking about Amazon Web Services (AWS) Middle East Region, located here in Bahrain.
Courtesy of AWS, you can receive cloud credits by joining one of our accelerators, or if you’re a StartUp Bahrain community member, we can offer you cloud credit! All you have to do is reach out to us.
As you’ll learn by the time you reach the end of this article, there are several benefits if your cloud services platform hosts their data centers locally in the same country/region as your startup.
Why do regional data centers matter for startups?
Without delving much into the technical nitty-gritty, two of the most pertinent advantages of using local data centers for your startup are low latency and compliance. Of course, higher latency issues can be patched using CDN as well, but your operational requirements would still fare better with locally established data centers.
Compliance is another major factor. Having your data centers in the same jurisdiction as your startup means better compliance with the legal and regulatory guidelines under which you’re obligated to operate.
There are several other benefits such as easier access, as well as better customer support in your native language, among others.
On top of that, if you opt for AWS (Middle East Region) as your preferred managed-cloud services platform, you are entitled to several Bahrain and GCC-specific perks that you may not get elsewhere.
AWS offers a wide range of perks for Bahraini startups
If you’re looking to use cloud-native applications to scale your business globally — just the way TransferWise, Deliveroo, and many others did — there are tons of options to choose from. For example, if you require a cost-efficient application to process big data in real-time, there’s the Amazon Kinesis.
Or if your startup could use a fast, efficient, and scalable container management service to manage Docker containers on a cluster, the Amazon Elastic Container Service promises to be of great help.
Overall, AWS offers a solution for even the most specific of your startup’s requirements — and that at highly competitive prices. More on that later. And it’s not just startups in their early stages, AWS has been serving as one of the fundamental forces powering the technological infrastructure of established Middle Eastern brands such as Al Tayer Group, MBC, Careem, Emirates NBD, and many others.
So, basically with AWS’s managed cloud services taking care of all pesky operational requirements, your core team will be free to pursue the things that matter the most for your startup — such as R&D, market expansion, customer satisfaction, and of course, product development.
Speaking of product development, AWS has a startup kit built just for that.
AWS Startup Kit for Bahraini startups
Amazon specifically rolled out the aptly named startup kit to help startups using AWS to accelerate their product development process. If you’re anything like us, the first thing you will notice about the AWS Startup Kit is its well-designed and highly practical sample workloads.
You can launch these sample workloads within a metaphorical blink of an eye — or to be more specific, within minutes.
These sample workloads are backed by AWS CloudFormation templates and they can provide you with an in-depth insight into the best practices surrounding security, reliability, and network. For further convenience, all codes are published on GitHub. All these resources are perfect for startups to come up with high-quality applications for a relatively much affordable cost.
Pay-as-you-go
It goes without saying that different startups have different requirements so far technological infrastructure and support-bases go.
AWS addresses that by enabling customers to pay only for what they need. A good metaphorical example would be if AWS was a pizza shop, it would be selling individual slices with all the toppings you need rather than a standardized, pre-made whole pizza.
Knowledge is power — More so when it is vast and free
Just in case none of the aforementioned perks were unable to woo you yet, here’s the most important of them all that will definitely help you make up your mind — a knowledge hub that has something invaluable for every startup.
All Bahraini startups using AWS are provided with detailed tutorials and training modules on the AWS portal and console. It’s a self-service system that basically lets you learn and discover new aspects of the technologies they intend to use.
And just in case you find yourself lost among so many options and don’t know how to proceed, don’t panic — help is just a free Digital Training course away.
In short, there are enough free resources available designed specifically to help you identify the different AWS services and technologies you can combine to deliver the perfect working solution that is scalable and cost-effective too.
So, that was a short walkthrough of how Bahraini startups can leverage the presence of AWS Middle East right in their backyard. Don’t forget, you can reach out to us at contact@startupbahrain.com to receive cloud credit.
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