Startups need all the help they can get before they get recognized and start receiving funding from VCs. During these lean times any saving is welcomed, and the announcement from Interoute to start offering free cloud data access through its European fiber network will definitely be appreciated.
According to Forbes contributor Antony Savvas, the company is going to make the free offer which is valued up to 1,200 euros ($1,630) over a year. The offer allows the startups to create two virtual machines (VM) with 1 vCPU, 1 GB RAM (News - Alert), 30 GB storage with two VDC geographical zones. The locations are going to be Berlin and Paris, and users will be able to transfer data between these two points without any fees. The second VM can be used for active data backups.
The goal of this initiative is to help startups across Europe develop their applications and services with the best available technology so they can start producing products and services to compete with other tech hubs around the world. By giving them a virtual cloud communications platform with unrestricted access or bandwidth, the company hopes to provide superior computing and communications technology, which would be difficult at this early stage of their development.
Unlike the startup culture in the U.S., which provides multiple opportunities for funding, European startups have a much harder time. According to the CTO of Interoute, Europe is as far back as ten years compared to North America when it comes to the startup market.
The Interoute network is composed of 60,000 km (37,282 miles) of lit fiber, ten hosting data centers, and 31 colocation centers along with 140 third-party data centers throughout Europe. Additionally it connects North America, the Middle East, and Africa with Tunis and South Africa.
"Starting a business is tough; you need every second of the day to focus on product development, sales and marketing in order to drive revenues. Startups can’t afford to worry about whether or not their virtual servers are going to let them down. So access to reliable, scalable, lightning fast cloud computing gives them a great foundation for innovation," said Matthew Finnie, CTO at Interoute.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson