On-Premises vs Cloud

On-Premises and Cloud both compete but at backend both operate the same way.

Let’s decode it….

Since years and years Cloud is trying to make a mark but some or the other reason it couldn’t. Now things have changed, in recent era, Cloud has become arguably the biggest buzzword after the Covid-19 pandemic in 2019/20, as organizations had to enable Cloud services for their employees to support their businesses.

Let’s try to understand the core difference, to use IT solutions there are always two options either to have all the software(s) on On-Premises or on Cloud.

On-Premises: When an organization buys servers and infrastructure, and place those inside their own location or building under their own control, managed by their own internal teams, it is called On-Premises.

Cloud: Now when we someone else places servers and infrastructure in their location or in their building and manages it for customer where customer accesses those servers and infrastructure via internet, it is called Cloud.

As we have been using on-premises since inception, we won’t go in its details. Let’s try to get little bit more details into Cloud.

Compute and Storage at a centralized place where all software(s) and its upgrades, DR management, HA management, Auto-scaling, Security etc. are managed by the service provider is called Cloud. Cloud is way more than this definition.

Types of Cloud

·        Private Cloud resides in your premises accessible via Intranet

·        Public Cloud resides somewhere around the globe and is accessible via the Internet.

Image: https://www.ebcgroup.co.uk/news-insights/on-premises-vs-cloud

There are many things to consider before moving your data to the Cloud.

·        Do Regulatory bodies in your country allows you, based on the nature of your data?

·        What is the egress cost to move data out of the Cloud just in case if you want to move out of the Cloud, how much it’s going to cost?

·        Does your selected Cloud service provider have all the tools you need or it offer third-party tools?

·        In the case of third-party tools, are those available as PaaS, SaaS, or IaaS by the Cloud service provider?

·        Do you have an internal skill set to support these Cloud services in the case of IaaS and SaaS?

A major reason to use Cloud is, 90% of semi and unstructured datasets are coming from online applications so it’s worth keeping it in Cloud. For example, social media data is huge and on-premises solution might not have enough storage. As per stats only Twitter itself generates 52 TB data daily, so the ideal way is to take that data from social media directly to Public Cloud and process it in there for DSS (decision support systems). Another example is CCTV data which is again huge, it’s not worth downloading it in your on-premises storage for processing.

There are three types of services available on Cloud

·        IaaS: Infrastructure as a Service

·        PaaS: Platform as a Service

·        SaaS: Software as a Service

Note: Above three Cloud services are explained in coming topics.

Cheers.