How to decide between onsite or hosted solution?

With so many brands and segments of enterprise software available in the market today, the choice to choose from has grown exponentially. Regardless of the make and the brand, the words “cloud”, “On-demand”, “hosted”, “Subscription”, etc keep popping up.

What do these terms entail to?

What benefits do these have?

Which strategy will work the most for you?

This article aims to answer all these questions for you. I will take you through:

1. The 2 major deployment philosophies prevalent in the market today, vis a vis onsite and hosted.
2. The “how it works” in brief.
3. The salient features of each methodology

By the end of this article, you will have a more firm understanding of each of these forks of deployment strategy and will be in a better position to ascertain which one of these fits your organisational needs better.

on-site (ŏnˈsītˈ, ônˈ-)

adjective.    Done or located at the site, as of a particular activity.

Onsite deployment methodology dictates that the enterprise software is installed and deployed on the premises of the business on hardware (servers and other network infrastructure) which is physically present at the location of the business. The following are the salient points of the onsite deployments:

1. The server is local, hence all the users will have to be local clients too. VPN can be used to provide remote access though it will take its toll on the native performance resulting in latency for the user accessing the system via VPN.
2. Your organisation will have complete control and access to the data as a result of a local deployment.
3. Local deployments mandate a robust internal IT team as they will have to take charge of the server maintenance, backups, data security and upkeep of the infrastructure for the smooth functioning of the day to day operations.
4. Local deployments mean a one time cost (covering the setup, installation, training) for complete ownership of the system.
5. Cost of ownership can be high when you account for the upkeep of the support infrastructure and the power consumption of the infrastructure.
6. Local deployments need the support of various vendors for regular updates and specialised support for the systems.
7. Upgrades will be easy and will only be necessary when you feel it is.
8. The server on a local network is easier to back up.
9. Without a robust backup strategy, local deployments are particularly susceptible to data loss events such as natural calamities and cyber attacks.  

host (hōst)

noun.    One that furnishes facilities and resources for a function or event.

Hosted deployments mandate the software be installed on hardware which is located at a remote data centre/centres, i.e the software is paid for(via subscription) by the business and is hosted on hardware that is not located at the business premises. Following are the salient features of a hosted deployment

1. You never fully own the software, think of it as a long-term rental
2. Instead of a one-time payment, you pay a monthly subscription.
3. Hosted deployments indemnify you from maintaining any IT infrastructure at your business as the service provider is responsible for the upkeep of the infrastructure.
4. Hosted solutions also reduce the cost of staffing as this setup is easily managed by a smaller IT team.
5. Hosted solutions have a redundant backup protocol, making it easier to recover from data loss events such as natural calamity, etc.
6. As it is a hosted system, you aren’t always in control of the data. That being said hosted solution providing companies do have an effective privacy policy is in place that puts you in charge of your data.
7. As long as you are using the service all is well if you decide to change the service provider, the process of migrating all the data can be a tricky and difficult task
8. Hosted service providing companies are better equipped to handle DDoS events and overall network security.

If you are a small company and you generally operate from only one location, then a hosted service can be an overkill in terms of the term subscription. On the other hand, if you are an SME or a bigger enterprise with multiple work locations, it’ll make more sense to go for the hosted implementation as it’ll save you a lot of time and money.

Apart from these fine points, it is important to bear in mind that ultimately its the requirement of the business that decides which methodology will be implemented. In our practice, we have seen that the total number of locations that will have to access the system along with the IT budget of the business are some of the more defining factors for selecting either of the methods.

If you are a business and you have been mulling over which kind of deployment you should go for, let us help you. Evomatiq Business Solutions is a lithe and boutique enterprise software service providing company that helps business align with the needs of the business, and implement the right system, the right way.

Contact us from here to know more on how we can empower your business.