Cloud or on premise? The choice is yours!

When you plan to acquire a business application, chances are you will more and more often have to choose between hosting it in the Cloud or on your on servers. The fact is that from the user point of view, there is not much difference and therefore the choice is entirely yours.

Here are some down to earth and critical questions you need to answer before making any decision.

But first, some basic definitions:

Cloud-based applications: an application running on / with computing resources (hardware and software) that are delivered as a service over a network (typically the Internet) (see wikipedia). There are quite a few versions of a cloud infrastructure: public cloud, hybrid, private cloud, racks... For the sake of simplicity, we will consider cloud in its most simple form, in which the application is hosted on the datacenter's servers.

On premise application: the application is hosted on your own servers, under your complete responsibility.

 

5 reasons to choose the Cloud version

• You need a system installed as soon as possible
  
• Your users will access the application mainly from outside of your office
• You do not think you have sufficient technical ability in-house
• You do not have the necessary computer infrastructure (servers, bandwidth,...) and you do not want to invest in this area
• You do not wish to manage this setup in the long term (security, physical time, software redundancy, maintenance...)

5 reasons to choose the on premise version

• The marginal cost of adding a new application to your existing servers is low
• You have the necessary resources (technical and human) to manage such a system especially regarding security and data recovery
• You need to integrate with other management systems such as ERP, invoicing... which are already installed on your servers
• You work with very sensitive data which is highly dependent on local legislation regarding its confidentiality
• You will be able to modify the infrastructure in order to respond to user’s requirements, particularly in terms of mobility

Gilles Hameury [   ]

Nikec Solutions [ www.nikecsolutions.com ]

Nikec Docstore is an application designed for professionals which allows storing any type of file, accessing them remotely from a computer or an iPad and sharing them with authorised colleagues or clients. By combining ease of use and the level of security required in the exchange of working and sensitive documents Nikec Docstore is ideal for mobile professionals and collaborative work. Plus the application is available on premise or in cloud (SAAS), so you always keep full control of your documents. For more information, please visit: www.docstorepro.com