In this article, Kamala Kannan Subramani, IT Manager at ManageEngine shares why it’s wise to consider on-premise solutions for the management of critical data, legacy applications, and workloads that require a large amount of customization.
According to a recent Gartner reportOpens a new window , cloud revenue is expected to grow by a staggering $266.4 billion in 2020, representing a 17% increase from last year. Even with such skyrocketing revenue growth, IT spending is expected to remain relatively flatOpens a new window , with only an estimated 3.4% increase in 2020. Seeing as CIOs and IT decision-makers will face increasingly sophisticated attacks on their cloud workloads, it is high time that they assess the potential consequences of their cloud migrations.
While ultimately any decision will come down to an organization’s unique context, needs and resources, here are 6 critical considerations to evaluate before making a decision to migrate to the cloud or to stay on-premise:
1. Compliance and Regulatory Issues
With data protection laws such as GDPR, CCPA, SOX, and HIPAA on the books, many healthcare and financial services companies are opting to keep their software on-premises. Companies realize that if their cloud data were to be compromised, they could face a litany of fines and untold reputational damage.
2. Costs
Several cloud providers, including AWS and Azure, do provide compliance and regulatory assurances; however, cloud migration does not come cheap. For large enterprises, the cloud costs can be more than twice as much as an on-premises option. However, it does depend on your enterprise’s exact needs. For example, if you intend to set up a data center with 500 machines, it will be significantly more expensive to move to the cloud. Moreover, applications with large amounts of data, a test environment, or a great deal of log generation will be much more costly in the cloud.
In contrast, if you are a small start-up looking to test something for a few weeks, operating on the cloud can be a good option. That said, if your organization has 100 computers, the cloud will likely be costlier in the long run.
Also, analytics-based applications that work on-premises do not need the scale and elasticity offered by cloud providers, so many organizations can cut costs by running local instances of such applications.
3. Security
If the bulk of your data is in the cloud, you have to trust that your cloud provider is taking your data security seriously. In the event that the cloud is compromised, you very well could have your customers’ data exposed.
If you are managing thousands of devices, it is much safer to keep your data on-premises. Also, if you are generating a substantial amount of logs, it is safer to run an agent on-premises. At the very least, you can run a gateway on-premises, and then send your logs to the cloud at a later date.
Applications that handle critical resources, such as data or endpoints, should only be moved to the cloud after careful consideration. For many enterprises, endpoint management software is one of the last tools to ever migrate to the cloud because so much rides on this software remaining secure. A hacked endpoint management tool could expose thousands of desktops to bad actors. Identity and access management systems are also good candidates for staying on-premises.
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4. Customization and Legacy Applications
Applications related to product data management, supply chain management and enterprise-class HR functions with lots of customization are typically kept on-premises because they’re tougher to migrate to the cloud.
Many organizations choose to keep their custom apps on-premises because ensuring the application schema is kept in sync during the migration can be cumbersome.
Legacy applications tell a similar story. If organizations are not able to completely encrypt the communication in their legacy applications, it’s not safe to take those apps to the cloud.
5. Network Dependencies
Organizations also need to consider network dependencies before migrating to the cloud. Most modern applications cannot function properly unless they’re connected to certain databases, web servers, or services. Apps that depend on specific network infrastructure could be especially difficult to migrate to the cloud.
6. Regional Issues
On-premises software can be run from nearly anywhere in the world. When an application is moved to the cloud, location becomes a bigger issue. Organizations are restricted to the locations that their cloud provider’s infrastructure supports, and this may be too big of a limitation for organizations that want to run their application from a specific place.
Metropolitan areas from Mumbai to Sydney are well-represented by popular cloud providers’ global infrastructure; however, remote locations are not. Location-based redundancies are also difficult to achieve with cloud infrastructure providers.
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Conclusion
Any given enterprise’s decision to move to the cloud depends on its size, sector, and future initiatives. Although cloud providers tend to offer regulatory and compliance assurances, many organizations opt to keep their legacy apps on-premises because it can be cumbersome to move such apps to the cloud while keeping the application schema intact. Applications with a great deal of customization are also typically kept on-premises for the same reason.
In addition to the aforementioned security benefits, enterprises can reduce their costs by keeping certain applications on-premises. For example, analytics-based apps that utilize on-premise data generally do not need the scale and elasticity offered by cloud providers. Lastly, if your organization needs to store data in certain geographical locations due to legislation or business concerns, cloud providers may not be able to facilitate this.
What do you think? On premise or cloud? Share your thoughts on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We would love to hear from you!