Princeton University
|
Computer Science 448
|
|
For this writeup you will assume a startup that offers cloud storage of media files and provides services for automatic format conversion of these files. The word limit is 500 words and you'll work on this writeup individually i.e., no opposing views. Assume that your company has 10 (big) corporate clients, currently using ~ 4000GB for ~1 million media files (combined), and it has 500k individual (small) clients, currently using ~100,000GB for ~25 million media files (combined). The company has a growth rate of 11% per quarter for individual clients and 1.5% per quarter for corporate clients. Currently, you utilize the cloud services of Amazon, Linode, and RackSpace for running your business. You are running an "open" business model, where you charge a 10% transaction fee per GB of storage and per GB of upload/download. You expose the underlying prices (with analytics) to your clients. Your CEO is asking your feedback on the following discussion items:
- In the next 2 years, can Amazon become a competitor? Why or why not? And how should we adjust our strategy based on our prediction.
- Given the current growth rate, should we a) continue working with the current cloud providers, b) add more while keeping existing, c) switch all or some.
- Should we focus on individual clients or corporate clients?
- What potential scalability problems can we face in the coming year? (this discussion item is more important than others)