Cloud Computing vs On Premise – What’s the Difference ? (Pros and Cons)

Cloud Computing vs On Premise – What’s the Difference? (Pros and Cons). In this post, we will introduce both software solutions and explain the critical differences between both to make informed decisions.

Earlier, On premise solution was the only option organizations have to set up and manage their servers for hosting websites and applications. However, the advent of cloud computing has turned the tide to a new place.

Today, businesses can experience the benefits of accessing devices effortlessly from anywhere worldwide. It has also made collaboration with the team members seamless.

Although it can make you feel powerful with its seemingly infinite scale, countless tools and services, and virtual options are also not an ideal solution for all the problems an organization face.

From security to the reliability, industries have multiple requirements. Moving from well functioning on premises software to cloud computing might be very expensive for some businesses. That is why the confusion remain, about which one to choose for their business.

Not all of them apply to every organization and their workloads. Therefore, it is significant to understand them in detail. Moving further in the blog, you will learn the critical difference between the two software to make informed decisions.

Shall we continue with Cloud Computing vs On Premise – What’s the Difference? (Pros and Cons).

What is Cloud Computing?

Cloud Computing helps you to complete the required IT services immediately. It also requests them to stay anywhere around the world through the Internet. In short, it is popular for its accessibility and ease of use. You can utilize three different types of clouds for your business.

  • Public CloudPublic Cloud is a service provider that owns every required hardware and software system. With the help of the Public Cloud, you can deliver your resources seamlessly over the Internet.
  • Private CloudPrivate Cloud on the other hand is a service provider used only by a single organization and businesses by installing servers in house. You can implement it in your business with the help of in house experts or hire a third party service provider.
  • Hybrid Cloud – This service provider includes both public and private clouds. Here, both the clouds manage the workloads. Adopting this cloud computing helps the organization to be more flexible and secure.

Features of Cloud Computing

Some of the major features of cloud computing are shown below:

  • On Demand and Self Service.
  • Easy Maintenance.
  • Scalability And Rapid Elasticity.
  • Economical.
  • Large Network Access.

Pros of Cloud Computing

The advantages of Cloud Computing are as follows:

  • Cost EffectiveInstalling cloud computing software incurs less cost. Businesses only have to pay for the subscription cycle. The rest is taken care of by this system only. Moreover, it eliminates the hassle of maintaining a malfunctioning infrastructure, which leads to data theft or loss. This way, you will save thousands of dollars.
  • Abstraction – Cloud computing models disconnect computing, storage, and network resources from the actual hardware assets. This way, traditional infrastructure abstracts the technical system management and expertise required. It also provides abstract technical administration for securities. It delivers specialized cloud security tools to handle access controls, firewalls, and vulnerability assessment.
  • Mitigates Responsibilities – Since another organization manages cloud storage, your IT staff’s time to install new patches or updates mitigates significantly. They tend to have more free type to do other tasks.
  • Effortless Installation – The deployment of cloud computing is relatively straightforward. It is set up in an hour. However, if you take the help of an expert service provider, the deployment is completed within minutes, saving your business a lot of time.
  • Scalability – Cloud infrastructure enables admins to add or remove capacity as and when needed dramatically. This way, no ability will go to waste.

Cons of Cloud Computing

Cloud computing also has some disadvantages.

  • Complexity Cloud providers frequently have to expand their service portfolios. If your organization’s requirement is more advanced, selecting, implementing, and managing the appropriate cloud services becomes very complex.
  • Litigation (Search Warrant) – If your company becomes a part of any investigation, law enforcement can issue a search warrant to your cloud supplier. Therefore, it is significant for organizations to have written guidelines and acceptable use policies to accompany the cloud storage service.
  • Cost Management – If your organizations are not careful, you might unintentionally use more cloud services than planned. Having vast up sticks in resource requirements can immediately break the bank.
  • Access Based On Connection – Since cloud computing entirely relies on cloud computing, you might knock out your access to important files. When you lose access to the files during a connection outage, your business operations get delayed, and employee productivity becomes impossible.
  • Lack of Control Over Reliability – When you hand over your business operation to a cloud service provider, you also relinquish control over reliability. Although cloud providers boast impressive uptime, services occasionally go down. Even brief interruptions to cloud services can cause fundamental problems for customers.

Now with Cloud Computing vs On Premise – What’s the Difference? we shall learn about on premise solution. 

What is On Premise?

In on premise, everything is in house. It consists of IT infrastructure comprising systems, hardware applications, and software applications. It provides complete ownership of your enterprise. You can also wholly oversee the maintenance of your plans. This system was traditionally used by almost every organization until cloud computing was invented.

When installed on your company’s servers and behind its firewall, on premise systems serve the organization for a longer time. It is reliable and secure and enables enterprises to maintain a control level that cloud computing often cannot provide.

However, according to the agreement among IT decision makers, organizations installing on premise and legacy systems will need to use new cloud and SaaS applications to achieve their business goals.

Features of On Premise

Some of the key features of on premise are as follows:

  • Highly secure data encryption.
  • Customizable hardware, and purpose built systems.
  • Infrastructure requires large and regular investments.
  • Complete data visibility and control.

Pros of On Premise Computing

On premise computing has the following advantages:

  • Infrastructure Control – Your organization, owns the hardware and system that underpins your IT infrastructure. It controls the components they live, how they run, and who can access them.
  • Operate Without Internet – If your organization uses on premise software, you do not have the internet to access data. Since most businesses rely on the Internet for their operations, they always fear losing the connection, which could harm productivity and makes it impossible to access crucial data. This software provides an internal network that makes it accessible, even without any Internet connection.
  • Costs – Long term, on premise infrastructure costs are lower for applications with predictable usage patterns. Once the organization purchases the hardware, the only ongoing cost is for power and maintenance.
  • Provide Greater Security – In on premise infrastructure, security is ultimately under the IT team’s control. They decide how, when, and why someone can access the network or hardware. The organization needs to meet privacy and regulatory requirements.
  • Efficiency – On premise software has low latency and developed environments with few or no external dependencies. The feedback loop between on premise infrastructure changes and individual employees is incredibly short.

Cons of On Premise Computing

On premise has some disadvantages as well. Move forward to know them in detail:

  • Reliability – Your organization’s infrastructure is as reliable as maintenance. You need to have a well trained team to ensure that everything runs smoothly.
  • Costs – If your organization purchases more servers, the resource demand ebb, underutilizing the machine’s capacity. Buying extra servers to accommodate an increase in demand is not cost efficient.
  • Security – Since your IT team is responsible for the safety of on premise hardware, the price of maintenance never goes away.
  • Scalability – Having a fixed set of on premise servers represents fixed resource capacity. An organization has to buy more resources whenever it needs them. Only a few organizations can build an internal infrastructure to match the scope and flexibility of a cloud provider’s platform and services.

The main part of Cloud Computing vs On Premise -is to learn what’s the Difference between the two? 

Cloud Computing vs On Premise Software - Key Differences

Cost

Cloud Computing

If you deploy cloud computing software, you only have to pay for the resources you use. It eliminates the costs incurred in upkeep maintenance. Cloud also adjusts the price up and down depending on how much it consumes.

On Premise

On the other hand, if you deploy on premise software, you will need to pay more than cloud computing service. Because, it requires the ongoing server hardware installation, maintenance, space, and power consumption costs.

Deployment

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing has different forms, the deployment is additional. In a public cloud computing environment, resources are hosted on the service provider’s premises. It allows resources to access those resources and use them as much as they want at any given time. Also, it does not require a physical server.

On Premise

As discussed earlier, the resources deployed in an on premise environment remain within your enterprise’s IT infrastructure. Therefore, your responsibility is to maintain the solution and its related processes. You will also need to hire knowledgable IT staff to keep the system running properly.

Security

Cloud Computing

In cloud computing, security is a crucial concern. Moreover, several cloud breaches are an essential concern of an IT department. It provides a secure environment. So your data is often safer in the cloud than on a server in your offices.

On Premise

Companies, like government and banking, have extra sensitive information and require an additional level of security and privacy. On premise software provides them with this service.

Control

Cloud Computing

In a cloud computing environment, companies struggle to question data ownership. Since data and keys are with the third party provider, accessing data becomes impossible during an unexpected situation or downtime.

On Premise

Enterprises using on premise data ultimately control the data. They know what happens to it. If your organization is highly regulated with additional privacy concerns, you will hesitate to leap to the cloud before others due to other reasons.

Mobility

Cloud Computing

In a Cloud computing, you can access your data using a mobile device over the internet. Mobility and flexibility are greatest features of this solution that allows users to work from anywhere at anytime.

On Premise

You can access the on premise system remotely but you will require a third party support to access the solution and a mobile device. This will increases the risk of security and communication failures. You will need to implement security measures before accessing files on personal devices.

Thank you for reading Cloud Computing vs On Premise – What’s the Difference? We shall summarize. 

Cloud Computing vs On Premise - What's the Difference? Conclusion

Both the solutions have advantages and disadvantages that you should weigh according to your organization’s needs. On premise solutions protect your data. But require significantly high efforts. On the other hand, cloud software offers maximum flexibility for you and your employees via the SaaS principle.

Please check out more content of cloud computing in our blog. 

Avatar for Hitesh Jethva
Hitesh Jethva

I am a fan of open source technology and have more than 10 years of experience working with Linux and Open Source technologies. I am one of the Linux technical writers for Cloud Infrastructure Services.

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