The Importance of Cloud Openness in Virtual IT Labs

Do you know the story of the E-learning company Buzzay? Don’t feel bad if you don’t; they never made it to market. However, their failure to break through provides a valuable lesson for any company deploying virtual IT labs.

The story of Buzzay begins like many Silicon Valley stories do, with five tech-savvy people huddled in a disorganized garage with a bright idea and some cheap pizza. These five had been fluent in JavaScript and Python since they were six years old, and they could repeat dialogue from The Matrix verbatim. Their idea was born on the drive home from Burning Man Festival. They pulled their Volkswagen T1 van into a small diner to grab some lunch.

From here, the stories diverge based on whose account you hear. One of the five says their waitress was the source of their inspiration.  And one of the others says that a Pink Floyd song playing on the tinny diner speakers inspired them—The line “Hey! Teacher! Leave them kids alone!” sparking the match. Regardless, the day after, they gathered in a rented garage, ordered pizzas, and didn't stop working until they had an MVP version of their Buzzay E-learning application. With bloodshot eyes, they symbolically clicked the mouse together to upload the application to their website. And then they waited. And watched The Matrix for the twenty-second time. And waited.

But after two weeks, still no downloads. Then one of the five remembered a former classmate: “She does something in marketing, but don’t worry, she’s cool.”  They invited her to the garage and showed her what they had spun up. After seeing it, she gave her prognosis: “You guys need a virtual IT lab to run your application so the whole world can use it and I will do the rest.”

And so it happened. Website visit rates went up, and then on a sunny California morning, a phone call came from a huge education publisher. The publisher began their technical inquisition. Through the first nine questions, no issues arose. While the founders of Buzzay felt their eyes begin to sparkle, they tempered their excitement. As the publisher continued: ‘Okay, great. One final question: Does your application support cloud services like AWS?” Well, the Buzzay application did, but the virtual IT lab they used did not. It took the five only a few days to switch to a virtual IT lab that supported cloud services like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. And they got back to the publisher expectantly. ‘We’re sorry, but we have chosen another application because it supports cloud services right away.’And everyone in the market followed the publisher, ending the Buzzay dream.

But as I said before: it came that close! Because if the Buzzay founders had immediately used the right virtual IT Lab, the whole world would have known Buzzay today. Now the five don’t even remember how they came up with the name.

Your Free Lesson: Implement a Virtual IT Lab with Cloud Openness to Serve All Customers

The moral of this story: Your software thrives in an open world where the cloud is the limit. Even if your prospects and customers don’t require cloud services today, chances are they will in the future as software gets more and more containerized and virtualized. So be prepared with a virtual IT lab that supports cloud access to stay ahead.

With Built-in Cloud Access to Save You Time and Effort

And one more free lesson for you, or actually a tip: Implement a virtual IT lab with built-in cloud access, like Instruqt. Instruqt has done all the hard work for you and comes out of the box with these cloud accounts:

• GCP projects
• AWS accounts
• Azure subscriptions

This saves you from hustling with setting up cloud accounts, so you can run and demo your software with cloud access in a snap. No tedious testing, no delays. Only satisfied and impressed customers. And if your cloud needs to expand, you can always set up your own cloud projects and accounts within Instruqt.

Therefore, with a virtual IT lab like Instruqt, you never end up on the boulevard of broken IT dreams as the five Buzzay founders. They’re doing okay, though. One became a guide dog trainer, one a sous chef, one a technical writer, and the other two married. They all still go to Burning Man every year. And their WhatsApp group is called StillBuzzay.

Experience Cloud Openness for Yourself

Take a test drive with Instruqt to see how easy and effective cloud access can be from a virtual IT lab.