Should we host in the cloud or on our own infrastructure?
Cloud hosting suits most projects. On-premise hosting is appropriate where regulation requires data to be held in a specific physical location, where the network has no permitted external access, where workloads depend on specific hardware, or where steady, large-scale compute makes owning hardware more economical. Cloud hosting turns capital expenditure and infrastructure operations into a flexible operating cost.
Cloud is generally more cost-effective for variable or growing workloads, and can be more expensive for large, predictable ones. A fair comparison includes the full cost of on-premise infrastructure: hardware refresh, power and cooling, network redundancy, backups, physical security and operations staff.
Cloud infrastructure defined as code can be rebuilt from scratch, so disaster recovery procedures can be tested regularly.
Compute and storage are largely portable between providers. Higher-level managed services create more dependency, and we assess each one individually for the cost of replacing it.
Hybrid hosting, such as keeping regulated data on-premise and running other workloads in the cloud, is a common and effective arrangement when the boundary between the two is clearly designed.
Related service
Custom SaaS DevelopmentMulti-tenant platforms with billing, administration and access control built in.
Was this helpful?