On-premises or Cloud Infrastructure? Let’s make the right choice for your business success

Eventually, every organization faces the question of how best to build its IT infrastructure. Should you move to the cloud or is it better to rely on traditional on-premises infrastructure? To answer this question, it is important to consider the many factors that drive your business today.

On-premises VS Сloud

In short and simple terms, local infrastructure is the equipment located at the customer's site and depends on its settings, network connection, power sources, and storage conditions. The term "cloud infrastructure" often refers not to the cloud as a technology but to something remote – the provider's software or server. In other words, a cloud infrastructure is a structure of multiple servers with built-in software that provides computing resources and data storage over the Internet.

It has evolved in such a way that local and cloud infrastructures have always been pitted against each other. Yes, these computing environments are fundamentally different in a number of ways: cost structure, scalability, access and security, regulatory compliance. There are many factors that make up this difference. However, these tend to be the most important factors in the decision to use the cloud.

Cloud adoption was driven by unprecedented flexibility. Providers began to offer incredible configuration options for every budget and business size. On the other hand, on-premises software has always been considered extremely reliable, with unprecedented security and control.

However, do these statements still hold true today? Should we contrast these concepts as two warring worlds? There is a view, which Gartner has written about before, that there is a trend towards symbiosis. It is a smart combination of local legacy systems with new cloud applications to optimize infrastructure costs, update processes, and reduce costs.

On-premise Infrastructure

Data security is always a priority for any business, whether it is in the cloud or on-premises where enterprise software is hosted. However, in some industries, this issue is strictly a matter of law, so sometimes companies have no choice but to host their applications on-premises. Occasionally, just knowing that all of the company's trade secrets are on their own servers on their own premises is enough to let top management sleep at night.

What is on-premises infrastructure? On-premises (local) hosting requires your own server hardware, software licenses, integration capabilities, and the availability of IT specialists to support and troubleshoot any problems that may arise. In simple terms, the company purchases a license or copy of the software that fully supports the business processes and hosts it itself.

There is a belief that because the entire instance of the software resides on the organization's premises, security is higher than when the infrastructure is hosted in the cloud.

The biggest disadvantage of on-premises environments is often the cost of setting up, managing and maintaining them, which can be significantly higher than in a cloud environment. These costs are typically much higher than organizing a cloud infrastructure. However, this does not include the cost of maintenance, which is the responsibility of the enterprise when something breaks or does not work. It is also important to remember that equipment has an unpleasant tendency to age over time, whereas with a provider it is updated imperceptibly and painlessly for the user.

Cloud Infrastructure

The cloud should be thought of not only as a computing platform that consists of many physical servers and uses virtualization technology to create virtual machines with flexible configurations, but also as a set of services that provide fault tolerance, scalability, and compliance and certification. Cloud services allow you to streamline projects by providing a wide range of tools and capabilities that make cloud platforms like AWS attractive to teams working on complex projects.

Cloud infrastructure differs from on-premises infrastructure in one important way. The company places its IT infrastructure and software on servers on its own premises, and the hosting company places it all in its own cloud environment. Yes, a company can order the amount of capacity it needs, scale up or down based on overall usage, user requirements, business growth, and pay as it goes.

A cloud server uses virtual technology to host business applications off-site. There are no capital costs, data can be backed up regularly, and companies only pay for the resources they use. For businesses, planning to expand globally, the cloud is even more attractive because it allows infrastructure to scale with minimal effort.

A flexible cloud server in Germany from SIM-Networks offers companies the opportunity to quickly get started with an OpenStack cloud platform. Scalable cloud hosting gives you the freedom of choice: a managed server where our specialists provide support and optimization, or develop your own IT infrastructure with the ability to easily scale up or down resources as business needs dictate.

Factors of choice

There are a number of fundamental differences between on-premises and cloud environments. Which path is right for your business depends entirely on your needs and what you're looking for in a solution. It is worth noting that the confrontation between cloud and on-premises solutions, if it ever existed, is becoming less antagonistic.

Therefore, we offer a list of the most common factors that have the greatest impact on infrastructure placement decisions:

1. Cost

Organizations that deploy software locally on their premises are responsible for the ongoing costs of server hardware, power, and space.

Enterprises using the cloud computing model pay only for the resources they need, with no maintenance and upkeep costs, and the price adjusts based on how much capacity is used.

Nevertheless, when you analyze the pricing model and cost as a factor of choice, you now have several options. To spread the cost of local infrastructure over time, you can use a loan or the generosity of investors. Yes, it is possible to avoid upfront capital costs for IT infrastructure, but you still have to pay the amount and there are always financial risks on the company's side.

2. Deployment

The on-premises environment is called that because it is deployed within the enterprise and the enterprise's IT infrastructure. The organization is responsible for supporting the solution and all processes associated with it. In a cloud computing environment, whether it is a private, public or hybrid cloud, the resources are hosted on the premises of the hosting company.

However, thanks to the popularity of container platforms such as Kubernetes – software for automating deployment, scaling and coordination – they allow for a patterned deployment, in a positive way.

The deployment process is the same for the end user, regardless of whether your infrastructure is built locally or in the cloud. Because of that, the management of many work processes will look the same today. Regardless of how or where the cloud computing environment is deployed, organizations will be able to access these resources at any time.

3. Scaling

It is obvious that at this point the local infrastructure loses its position. It is not so easy to scale up and down; these changes always involve a long process of purchasing and configuring new equipment. With a cloud environment, it is very easy to scale on demand to grow your IT environment and provision resources when additional capacity is needed. Cloud services provide virtually unlimited scalability.

Scalable cloud architecture is made possible by virtualization. Unlike physical machines, which have fixed resources and performance, virtual machines are highly flexible and can be easily scaled up or down. They can be moved to another server or placed on multiple servers simultaneously, and workloads and applications can be migrated to larger virtual machines as needed.

Third-party cloud service providers have all the major hardware and software resources to scale quickly, something that an individual company could not cost-effectively do on its own.

4. Control and Security

In an on-premises environment, an organization stores all of its data and has complete control over what happens to it. Because of the added privacy concerns, companies in highly regulated industries are often reluctant to move to the cloud.

In a cloud computing environment, many companies and vendors are concerned about data ownership. Data and encryption keys reside with your third-party provider. If the unexpected happens and there is downtime, you may not be able to access that data in time.

Security is often a key barrier to adoption cloud computing. Cloud providers offer tighter access controls than most on-premises environments. They maintain their environments and stick to stricter security policies than the professionals who manage the on-premises infrastructure.

5. Regulatory Requirements

Every company in every industry operates under some form of regulatory control. For government agencies, as well as a number of companies whose industry and regulatory documents are strictly regulated, it is very important that data storage clearly meet the requirements of the law. As a result, sometimes the local placement of infrastructure is not even a matter of choice for the organization itself.

Organizations that have adopted a cloud computing model should exercise due diligence and consider key factors when selecting a hosting company. It pays to make sure that the provider not only offers the necessary cloud services, but also meets all regulatory requirements in its field. Choosing a reliable hosting company that adheres to security standards and provides high fault tolerance is critical for data protection and successful business operations.

When choosing a cloud infrastructure provider, you should also consider the SLA. A service level agreement is important to ensure that both parties, the provider and the customer, understand a single standard of service and performance, including accessibility requirements. By entering into such an agreement, the supplier and customer have a clearly documented method of working according to their mutual expectations. An example of such an agreement is the SIM-Networks SLA.

Learn how to use

Now it is time to talk about the use of on-premises and cloud infrastructure in the work of organizations across industries. Infrastructures can be used in a variety of ways: data storage, entertainment, management, social networking, education, art, GPS, and many others.

1. Data Storage

Cloud computing not only allows you to store and access data such as files, images, audio, and video, but also provides high scalability and fault tolerance, which are critical for modern businesses. While on-premises servers can provide high performance for individual tasks, their efficiency diminishes as data volumes and backup requirements grow, and this is where the cloud offers significant advantages. For example, the SIM-Networks cloud features high-speed IO1 data storage that provides the performance and reliability needed for high-load projects. Cloud solutions allow companies to flexibly increase storage capacity and maintain uninterrupted operations even as resource demands increase.

An additional benefit is the increased number of I/O operations for software that works with data on disk in single-threaded mode. The best way to increase performance is to combine the use of IO1 memory with high frequency cores. Here you can read the interesting experience of SIM-Networks specialists on how to transfer up to 25TB of customer IT infrastructure data.

2. Backup and Recovery

In addition to providing secure storage, cloud service providers also offer ways to back up data and resources in the cloud. Backing up data on a local computer system is a difficult problem, and in the event of a disaster, data can be lost forever. With cloud computing, data can be easily restored with minimal damage in the event of an emergency.

SIM-Networks engineers frequently handle cloud migration, VPN configurations, and Backup as a Service (BaaS) solutions. What infrastructure requirements did the customer have? How did we seamlessly migrate their virtual servers to the cloud and implement the BaaS service? Find out more here.

3. Big Data Analysis

The use of cloud computing in deep data analysis plays an important role. Extremely large amounts of data (big data) make it impossible to store, process and analyze using traditional data management systems. With unlimited storage in the cloud, enterprises can store big data and, more importantly, have the computing power and scalability to process and analyze this huge amount of data to gain valuable business insights.

4. Testing and Development

Cloud computing applications offer the simplest approach to product testing and development. On-premises environments require more time and money to set up IT resources, infrastructure, and labor. Cloud computing provides scalable and flexible cloud services that organizations can use to develop, test, and deploy products.

5. E-commerce

E-commerce applications in the cloud allow users to respond quickly to emerging opportunities and offer new ways to perform tasks with minimal cost and time. A good example is seasonal changes in sales intensity. With the ability to quickly configure and flexibly scale, the cloud environment is easy to use for managing customer data, product data, and other operating systems, and it is very easy to perform seasonal scaling based on load.

6. Computing in Education

For a number of reasons, distance learning has become an integral part of modern society. This is an area where the use of cloud infrastructure has become a lifesaver. E-learning, online distance learning programs and student information portals are some of the key applications of cloud computing in education. In such a learning environment, students, teachers, and researchers are provided with all the modern tools for learning, teaching, and experimenting so that all stakeholders can connect to their institution's cloud and access data and information.

And in Conclusion

While many offices debate the pros and cons of an on-premises environment versus a cloud-based one, we would like to mention another model that combines the best of both worlds. A hybrid cloud solution is one that incorporates elements of different types of IT deployment models. Hybrid infrastructure includes both on-premises and cloud infrastructure, as well as technology that connects different cloud resources and simplifies workload management in the cloud, data control and analysis, and as a result, the company's business processes. The SIM-Networks Hybrid Cloud allows you to take advantage of both public and private clouds, ensuring system stability and readiness for any load.

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