As technology advances, companies are increasingly finding themselves caught at a crossroads. The question being asked is whether they are to absorb and adopt the newest innovation or to bide their time and hold onto their tech and infrastructure, which has been sufficient to this point.
The question between on-premise servers versus cloud-based computing is a multi-faceted one that does not necessarily provide a one-size-fits-all answer. The key differences lie in the requirements of each company considered alongside the possible solutions to the problems faced. These are some of the considerations and options in the argument between on-premise and cloud services.
It may not be necessary to go full cloud immediately
Prior to making the leap onto cloud infrastructure and services, companies retain the option of existing in a tech limbo. A perfect solution here can be colocation data centers, the best example being LOGIX's Texas colocation centers.
With this solution, hardware and software are not hosted in-house but they do not exist on the cloud exclusively. Rather a company still owns its tech infrastructure, but they house it off-site. The service means a third party will house, maintain, cool, secure, and provide uninterrupted access to the infrastructure and services.
Data is backed-up automatically on the cloud
Data breaches can prove detrimental to any company, be it simply operational data or sensitive information. To mitigate these risks companies, employ firewalls and strive to either back up their data via a schedule or manually. While these methods can provide security and durability, they are not iron-clad.
Firewalls can be breached, and backups can fail, both of which can hinder operational productivity. Back-ups on the cloud are secured and happen routinely. There has also been a considerable amount of time and energy dedicated to securing data and software by the third-party cloud-service companies.
On-premise servers require constant IT support and maintenance
On-premise infrastructure may provide complete control of hardware and services to the company in question, but this control comes with complete responsibility. A robust IT tech and support team is required to maintain on-premise servers - a team that would need scaling as the requirements and software grows.
It racks up exponential costs and man-hours. In contrast, cloud-services shift maintenance and support responsibility over to the third-part and the translation results in a company only paying for what they specifically use.
Cloud-service downtime is generally considerably reduced
IT infrastructure for the foreseeable future will always suffer from sporadic downtime. Be it due to system maintenance or server malfunctions. In these events services come to a halt and all energy is expended in getting the servers and services functioning correctly. For on-prem solutions, this task falls to the IT team, a task which can demand a lot of time and money.
With a cloud-service solution, this burden is shifted. The cloud-service products that are offered are handled and maintained by hosts of IT teams whose sole purpose is to keep the services up and running.
Scaling is effortless with cloud-services
The problem of IT infrastructure scaling is felt by small and enterprise companies alike. This is because the size and scale of on-prem tech need to be decided upon when it is built. Past this point, development, additions, and capacity alterations require a considerable amount of work, testing, and downtime.
Cloud-services do not suffer these scaling issues as the infrastructure has already been configured for such occasions. If a company’s requirements were to increase rapidly, software to meet these demands could be accessed as soon as they are integrated into the cloud environment and the subscription has been updated.