On-Premise vs. Cloud Solutions for Enterprises

On-premise offerings

On-premise solutions are those that are deployed in the traditional manner. Servers are acquired, operating systems are installed, other hardware may be involved. With VpsCity, you are able to virtualise the servers You might have the hardware in a cage within a shared data centre or hosting facility, but they are still tangible, physical assets for which you are responsible.

Hosted offerings

VpsCity offers hosted solutions to you within our data centres and other facilities. Your server is usually contracted for a period of time, and built for you specifically. They may be hosted in more than one location, but the locations are fixed and known, and the resources are largely yours. VpsCity is responsible for your complete on-premise solution. If it’s a data centre, we provide the electricity, physical security, and core networking functions. We also provide all the support and configuration. You are largely hands off.

Cloud offerings

Hosted offerings may sound like cloud offerings, but there are some critical differences to understand. We have established a few essential characteristics of cloud computing that should help you understand the primary differences.

1. Broad network access: cloud services are typically accessed over the Internet, as opposed to being accessible only over a private connection.
2. Resource pooling: there is some degree of shared resources from which services draw as needed.
3. Rapid elasticity: clients needs may expand or contract, and the service will expand or contract with those needs.
4. Measured service: clients are billed based on some measured consumption. That could be licenses, or CPU cycles, or Gigabytes of storage consumed, or number of mailboxes; whatever the thing measured, that is how customers are billed. You pay for what you use.

VpsCity has also standardised around three types of service models.

1. Software as a Service (SaaS): Applications that could be email, CRM, cloud storage, etc.
2. Platform as a Service (PaaS): This includes web sites, web applications, etc.
3. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): Typically, virtual machines hosted in the cloud and made available to the customer, who maintains the operating system on up.

Finally, we have defined three deployment models.

1. Private cloud: It’s mine, all mine, and not yours. The private cloud is used exclusively by one user.
2. Public cloud: It’s yours, mine, his, and anyone else who is willing to pay for it. Used openly by the general public.
3. Hybrid cloud: This part is yours, and that part is mine, and we will connect them together in some way. It’s made up of two or more deployment models (private and public) within the same organisation.

The Hybrid Approach

There’s no reason to think the choice between on-premise and cloud is a mutually exclusive one. Clients can pick and choose what works best for them. Maybe you want to keep your email system on-premise, but leverage a cloud-based service for message hygiene, continuity or archiving. Or perhaps you will deploy your domain controllers and file and print servers on-premise, but build application and database servers in the cloud using an Infrastructure as a service provider, like VpsCity. We can provide you with computing resources for far less than you can do on your own. Enterprises may want to deploy all their production systems on-premise, but can leverage cloud services to easily and cost-effectively spin up systems for testing. Whether you are more inclined to favour on-premise solutions or cloud-based solutions, don’t assume you have to choose one to the exclusion of the other. There are times where both may be the better choice, depending on circumstance the right choice is up to you. The one thing to keep in mind is that on-premise solutions may represent large capital investments, but cloud-based solutions may represent long-term subscription contracts. Weigh each option carefully, focus on doing what you do well with your existing staff first, and then look at if it makes sense to float away to the cloud!

Smartly Engineered for Greater IT

VpsCity develops easier, smarter and affordable enterprise-class IT solutions for businesses. Our solutions enable IT administrators to easily and efficiently discover, manage and secure their business networks, systems, applications and communications wherever they exist. VpsCity is committed to its clients worldwide to deliver the trusted expertise, rightsized and smartly engineered IT solutions with a strong focus on security excellence. VpsCity is a channel-focused company with a network of thousands of partners worldwide. 

Which is best?

Like so many IT questions, the answer is that it is largely dependent upon a number of things about your enterprise. If you have the necessary expertise on staff, and sufficient resources to provision what is required, then you may want to keep it on-premise. If you have trust issues, or very unique compliance requirements, you may want to keep it on-premise. Be careful with that one though, as you may find that a cloud provider can meet your security and compliance requirements better than you can, and for less cost! If you don’t have and can’t afford the expertise on staff to maintain something, cloud based offerings should be very appealing. If you need global presence, 24x7x365 support, or extreme scale, cloud based offerings may be the only realistic way to get there for a business. Let’s look at some specific things you should consider when evaluating whether to do something on-premise or move to the cloud.

When selecting a new server option for your enterprise, one of the most critical factors in your decision will be whether you choose an on-premise vs. cloud solution.

Consider any technology today, and you will likely find a “cloud” version that is just perfect for your needs. Cloud-based solutions and cloud computing in general seem to be what everyone is talking about - what everyone desires - if it’s in the cloud, it must be better, right? Well, maybe, and maybe not.

For an enterprise trying to decide which solutions are right for their needs, understanding what the key differences are, where one is better than the other, and sometimes, more importantly, where one is worse than the other is critical in ensuring the decision maker for the enterprise makes the right choice.

This blog post provides a breakdown of the advantages and disadvantages of each type of server for your enterprise, and how you can determine which is best for your organisation.