Running a successful business is similar to living life to the fullest. Both require you to make difficult, critical choices. For instance, when moving to a new home, you have two options – you can either purchase or rent. Purchasing a home is a long-term investment with many upfront costs and more liability. However, if you decide to rent one, you save money on the upfront costs. Each side has its pros and cons.
You need to make a similar choice when deciding the route of critical IT infrastructure for your business. You can either have in-house servers installed with all of the associated costs or choose cloud hosting. Let’s compare cloud hosting with in-house server installation to help you decide which way to go in four crucial parameters.
1. Infrastructure Investment
Think of the home analogy again for the related cost. Deciding to buy a home costs much more than renting one but depends on your needs. The same holds when investing in IT infrastructure for your business.
In-house servers firstly require a comprehensive setup in a dedicated space inside the office premise. The next investment is hiring IT staff for various needs, be it installation, upgrade, or modifications. Since everything will be installed in your office and managed by the hired team, you do not need third-party service providers.
The main concern with in-house server installation is the incurred expenses for maintenance, setup, upgrades, and hiring professionals.
With cloud hosting, you free yourself from various expenses as well as responsibilities. You do not need a dedicated server space in your office. Nor do you need to invest in the maintenance and upgrade of servers. The hired cloud hosting provider handles all such tasks and related expenses.
Think of cloud hosting as the rental side of the home analogy. You pay for your current needs without having to worry about long term costs. You can choose server specifications based on your business needs.
Also Read: A Beginner’s Guide to Infrastructure As A Service (IaaS)
2. Scalability
The home analogy can be extended to cover this aspect as well.
Suppose your family is growing and your home cannot accommodate your entire family. In that case, one solution is to buy a larger home. In case you live in a rented home, you can either move to a bigger place or choose another rented house for a few of the members to live separately.
Pertaining to the IT aspect of your business, this means that you can either add more in-house servers for scalability or choose increased cloud specifications with your cloud hosting provider.
Again, the same question – which one to choose?
Let’s explain it a bit more.
With in-house servers, scalability means expanding your existing server system. For this, you need to look for additional physical space, then check for the need to upgrade the current hardware and software, and the time and money it would take for reinstallation. This process may result in the slowdown or complete downtime of your business for some time, which will affect the operations and productivity.
In other words, the scalability of in-house IT infrastructure needs to be carefully planned and accounted for.
Cloud hosting, on the other hand, offers greater flexibility to scale up or down your cloud resources. You can easily upgrade server specifications by contacting your cloud hosting provider. The upgrades do not take much time or money with cloud hosting, avoiding significant slowdown or downtime.
Need more clarity on this? Consider the following example – A tax professional who chooses tax software hosting services can easily upgrade the chosen cloud hosting plan during the tax season. This will help him satisfy the increased demand for enhanced cloud resources at a low cost and with a hassle-free experience.
Recommended Read: What makes Cloud Hosting an Absolute Necessity for SMBs?
3. Accessibility
Data accessibility can be easily understood in this way –
If you have an object placed inside a kitchen cabinet, you cannot pick it up or use it unless you are near it. You can only access the item when you are close.
When you have in-house servers, you would want various business applications hosted on these servers. Since you exercise complete control over the servers, you can keep the data safe as well.
But what if you are not at your office but want to access a local-hosted software?
In-house IT infrastructure limits the remote accessibility of data and software. The problem grows when you have separate servers installed in different locations, and they are not interconnected.
As a better alternative, there is cloud hosting. One reason businesses switch to cloud hosting services is the freedom to access data and software remotely. When you choose a reliable cloud hosting provider, you can easily access cloud-hosted data or software remotely. During the current COVID-19 pandemic, this remote access ability is highly sought by most businesses.
If you want to overcome the accessibility limitation of in-house servers, switch to cloud hosting, and enjoy data centralization.
4. Data Security
Maintaining robust IT data security is another concern with in-house servers. You can invest in the best-in-class security measures to keep sensitive data safe, but this significantly increases costs, especially if you have multiple devices you are securing.
Cloud hosting wins the game even in this aspect, irrespective of the business type. With your data and business applications hosted on the cloud, you do not need to invest in in-house IT security methods such as intrusion alert, physical security, or firewalls. Your chosen cloud hosting provider caters to all such needs.
You also get a competitive edge with cloud hosting to satisfy the need for regular data backups. Most cloud hosting providers make regular data backups to ensure smooth and easy data recovery whenever needed.
The decision to switch to the cloud protects against accidental data loss. At Verito, we offer 15-days rolling backup to ensure that our clients do not lose even a bit of their data.
You May Like to Read: Backup as a Service: A Complete Guide
The Bottom Line
Your decision to choose between in-house servers and cloud hosting requires careful analysis of your business needs. Make sure you do not limit your decision-making only to peer recommendations or cost factors.
About Verito Technologies
Verito Technologies provides fully-managed, turn-key cloud hosting solutions for all size companies. We host your favorite tax/accounting software on a dedicated cloud server backed by enterprise-grade security that is SOC2, PCI DSS, SSAE compliant, and our strategically located data centers offer a 99.99% uptime guarantee. Automated backups and a 24/7 support team provide complete peace of mind.
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