Competitive Advantages

In today’s world, tons of people are opening up their own businesses with the hope of seeing success and profit. In order for these businesses to become successful, they need to have customers. But what makes these customers choose one specific product or service over all the others?  Well in business words, it is because one firm has a competitive advantage over all of the others. This post is going to explain how running a business with cloud based software can be an great competitive advantage over rivals.

A real life example of an organization using cloud as a competitive advantage would be Netflix. Does anyone remember the days when you had to drive all the way to Blockbuster in order to rent a movie? Getting all the way to blockbuster and walking across the isles to rent out a movie was way too time consuming for the neutrals liking and Netflix knew this. After cloud started to expand, Netflix and Amazon Web Services (AWS) partnered up for their services and delivery of content. AWS is a cloud computing provider that allows Netflix to organize thousands of web servers and terabytes of storage within a couple of minutes. Because of this, people can now watch Netflix shows and movies at a lightning fast stream anywhere in the world on a computer, tablet, or even smartphone without having to move from their chairs. Netflix saw a flaw in Blockbusters business and turned it into a competitive advantage. Fast forward a couple of years from the blockbuster days and now blockbuster is bankrupt while Netflix is a billion dollar company.

References: http://aptris.com/news-events/itsm-insights/paas/cloud-computing-use-drives-new-competitive-advantages/

Kelly. "Amazon Want 100% Of Netflix Streaming On Their Cloud." World TV PC Streaming Video and TV. Worldtvpc, 20 Nov. 2012. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.
Butler, Brandon. "Why Netflix Is One of the Most Important Cloud Computing Companies." Network World. Network World, 24 July 2013. Web. 25 Feb. 2015.