Off the back of the pandemic many businesses have decided to move to the cloud. This is a massive change and can be scary, but many businesses are seeing the benefits of cloud solutions, in particular Azure.
Anyone can make the move over to the cloud. In this blog we will talk about the advantages and disadvantages of both on-prem and cloud-based solutions.
What is an On-Prem Solution?
An on-premises IT solution is when all of your data, applications and systems are stored within on a physical server within an organisation.
There are reasons that businesses may want to help systems on-prem and in-house. Nowadays most of these reasons are obsolete when it comes to standard business practice. Cloud based solutions are more than enough for an organisation’s needs.
Benefits
- Reliability – Cloud systems could be disrupted if your internet drops out, as cloud-based solutions may need an internet service to be accessed.
- Control – On-prem solutions allow a business to maintain complete control of their data and how to handle this data. This can be beneficial for organisations that operate in highly regulated industries. However, this level of control is only beneficial with the correct security controls in place.
Drawbacks
- Scalability – Physical serves are hard and expensive to scale up. This could delay business growth and cause problems for your IT/maintenance team.
- Reliability – If your servers have any hardware failures or power outages there is no way for you to be able to access that system. You would have to use the backup and copy the data across to a new server- this will be costly.
- Cost – Physical servers are expensive. Running costs, hardware costs, the cost of a server maintenance team and installation costs are costs associated with an on-prem server. For some businesses constantly forking out loads of money
Microsoft Azure
Microsoft Azure is a public cloud hosting system – in which your systems and applications are hosted online. Businesses are seeing Azure as the future of cloud computing due to the benefits that the cloud offers.
Benefits
- Convenience – MS Azure is easy to use and convenient for users. With seamless integration with Microsoft 365 Azure allows you to work from anywhere, which in this day and age is important for most businesses.
- Modernisation – Cloud solutions are always updating to keep in line with new technologies. This ensures compatibility with new and advanced features that are coming more often than not. Cloud services is the future, make sure you don’t get left behind!
- Costs – Rather than having to pay a lump sum for a server and an ongoing maintenance cost, you can just one monthly Microsoft fee. This will include the cost for the cloud server and the maintenance. This can drastically decrease IT costs.
- Reliability -Azure is run by Microsoft’s expert team. Any issues that may occur can be dealt with in real time with the experts at Microsoft. Having to rely on the hardware and a maintenance team is no longer necessary.
Drawbacks
- Externality – Businesses may decide not to go with a cloud-based solution as their data is sensitive and are wary of the security risks associated with transferring data to the cloud.
Cloud computing is the way the business world is going. It has many advantages that traditional servers at a lower operating cost. This is the crucial advantage of Azure over on-prem solutions and is the reason why many companies are making a move over to the cloud.
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