On-site Servers Vs. Cloud Hosting: Which Should Your Business Choose?
In an era where setting up an on-site server is easy, affordable, and installations can be incredibly small, and housing your data in affordable online cloud storage solutions, it’s hard to know which way to turn.
Do you manage your data systems yourself, and all the maintenance and potential issues that may come with that decision? Or do you trust other businesses with your sensitive company data?
Whichever you go with, it’s worth knowing the benefits and downsides to both.
Do you manage your data systems yourself, and all the maintenance and potential issues that may come with that decision? Or do you trust other businesses with your sensitive company data?
Whichever you go with, it’s worth knowing the benefits and downsides to both.
On-site Server Storage: Control at a Cost
Managing your own servers gives your company total freedom; freedom over storage size, where the installation lives, how performant it is, how much it costs, and so on. That said, onsite servers come with their own considerations: The Advantages:- You get to choose what you want: storage size, installation location, installation size, etc.
- No ongoing overheads to external companies for maintaining your servers.
- Control over your own data and customer data, meaning less risk of data hacks or exposure.
- Reliability, even if the internet goes down; local networks can still be utilised, even if the internet is offline.
- Local servers deliver the greatest speeds; because data isn’t being transferred over long distances, transfer times are often extremely fast.
- If something breaks, you can quickly remedy the problem; lower waiting times to get back up and running.
- Reached your storage limits? No problem. Just install some more, equalling a relatively small one-off cost as opposed to cloud’s increased ongoing monthly payments.
- Higher upfront costs: You’re paying for the server hardware upfront, in return for lower ongoing maintenance costs.
- If something breaks, your company has to fix it; no external company repair teams.
- Requires a company IT department or skilled personnel; an expensive investment if you’re an SMB without a pre-existing dedicated support department.
Cloud Storage: Ease of Use, Via an Expensive (Potentially) Open Door
Cloud offers companies an easy to install, simple to use storage and online application solution; because it’s not your company maintaining the technology, you don’t need to worry about breakdowns, loss of data, and more. However, you’re putting your company data in another company’s hands, and paying a substantial amount each month to do so: The Advantages:- No upfront hardware investment to consider.
- Easy to implement quickly into your business, and support by onboarding teams makes it simple to start.
- Server issues aren’t your businesses’ concern; the cloud provider will manage issues on your behalf.
- Following the previous point, reputable cloud providers offer failsafes in the event of data loss and similar issues, meaning a very low risk of any permanent business impact.
- Quick and easy scaling up of resources and storage as needed: You may need more resource allocation during certain intensive periods, and less at other times. Cloud storage enables scaling up and down quickly and easily.
- Maintenance and upgrades are done for you.
- The monthly costs associated with cloud solutions will never go away; you will be paying for the service for as long as you use it.
- Want more storage? That’s an additional cost; comparatively, adding storage to your own onsite server can be a smaller upfront cost, and a much lower long-term cost.
- If the internet goes down, your company can’t access any data or online cloud applications.
- You’re trusting cloud providers to maintain the security of both your company data and that of your customers.
