During the last few years cloud services have been entering our life at a very fast speed. If at the beginning of the last decade, cloud services were only used in big corporations and IT companies, now it’s used by almost any person that has a smartphone, tablet or computer. Amazon, Microsoft, Dropbox, Google Cloud (google drive), you name it. Cloud services offer a convenient way to store your files, photos and important stuff to you and your family. Gradually companies and businesses started to migrate their physical IT infrastructure, such as servers, to cloud. You may wonder why they would do this and does it make sense for a small business to migrate their server in the cloud? Well, let’s discuss and decide whether a small business should own a on-premise server or a cloud based server. Let’s see the advantages and disadvantages of both.
On-premise Server
Many business owners are looking for “pay once and own it” type of investment, by purchasing a on-premise server. However, there are a few challenges associated with this purchase. They are listed below:
- High upfront investment and maintenance costs. An on-prem server costs a considerable amount depending on its configuration. On top of that there is maintenance that has to be performed on the server. If something breaks in a server, there are costs to replace the broken part, plus downtime. Usually after 5 years of operation, the server has to be replaced as it’s no longer supported by the manufacturer and in case of hardware failure, you might not be able to find the broken part. Also, newer Operating Systems come up, more resource intensive applications are out there that require more power from a server. So a server replacement is needed after about 5 years of operation.
- Power. Usually on-prem servers for small businesses are kept at best in a specialized server rack or in most cases under the desk of some employees. Some servers are connected to UPS – Uninterruptible Power Supply that offers 15-30 minutes of uptime in case of power failure. Other servers are just connected straight into the wall power jack. In either case, if power would go out for any reason for more than 30 minutes – server would crash.
- High costs for professionals to maintain it. Every server requires backups, updates, patch management, cyber security audits and more complex stuff that has to be performed by professionals. Paying IT contractors might take a toll on the overall costs of maintaining an on-prem server.
- Internet Uptime. If the server is hosting an Internet facing application that customers regularly access, Internet uptime must be close to 100% and Internet redundancy must be in place. Of course, small business can’t afford Internet redundancy by keeping the same public IP in case of ISP1 switches over to ISP2. Internet redundancy in this case would cost a lot.
On-premise server still has a few advantages over cloud server and they are listed below:
- Low latency network access to the server. In case the server is hosting a Voice over IP (VoIP) applications, such as those used for IP telephones, then it’s best to host a physical server on-prem. Because VoIP apps require low latency connections to the server.
- No reliance on Internet connection. To access an on-prem server you don’t need an Internet connection, which isn’t the case with a cloud based server. Server is locally accessed over network and even if Internet goes down, server is still accessible.
Cloud Based Server
Cloud based server on the other hand has lots of advantages especially for small business. Cloud based server for small business will help alleviate some of the issues that are linked with on-premise server.
- Savings. If you currently have an on-prem server, how much does it cost to maintain it? If you plan to expand your business or install new “more resource intensive” applications on the server, will they run smoothly? You will most likely have to upgrade server’s hardware. And this is not going to be cheap. On the other hand cloud based server for small business can scale easily without any implication from your side. Cost of cloud server performance upgrade are considerably less than those of on-prem server.
- Increased reliability. Cloud based server for small business offers an increased level of reliability over on-prem server. Cloud service providers enable redundancy on each piece of equipment, such as: power, Internet connection, storage, server itself and backup locations. It’s very unlikely a cloud based server will go down.
- Collaboration. Collaboration has become a crucial part of every business including small business. By having a cloud based server, small businesses can heavily rely on effective collaboration between employees with an increased experience over on-prem server. If you have Internet connection, there is no need to be close to a local server.
- Flexibility and scalability. This is probably one of the most important factors that would influence the decision when choosing a cloud based server for small business. Cloud based servers could be scalable in both directions: upgrade as you need (provide a more performant server to keep up with increased usage and demand) and downgrade to reduce costs (mostly for seasonal businesses when server usage is low).
Summary
More and more small businesses choose to migrate over cloud based servers. Of course every business will have to decide for themselves what’s best and Ziemen Networks engineers are here to help. Ziemen’s approach is to perform a deep discover of each small business IT infrastructure and provide most cost effective, reliable and long term affordable solution to each specific business.