I am a cloud expert. Not really! Onalytica listed me in the 2022 Who’s Who in Cloud. But that doesn’t mean I always recommend the cloud for every business. Sometimes, the servers in your office are the most important.
when? Here’s my checklist for when to go to local servers instead of the cloud.
Expenses
The big promise of the cloud is that it will always save you money.
But it’s not that simple for all the talk about cloud operating expenses (OPEX) being an inherent advantage over in-house capital expenses (CAPEX).
To realize those savings, you must know exactly what you’re doing and need the cloud’s ability to quickly and easily provide computing power.
Cloud costs are more complicated than they first appear.
Sure, a public cloud can start cheap, but the monthly bill jumps as you put more workload on those virtual machines (VMs) and container instances. True, the cloud offers much-needed flexibility whether you’re a startup with a growing workload or one that’s highly diversified.
But it’s a different story if you have a stable, predictable workflow,
Cloud pricing can also be very complicated.
I found nothing surprising in Flexera’s 2021 State of the Cloud report, which found in its survey that “respondents self-assured that their organizations are wasting around 30% of their cloud spend. “
Is that all? I’m sure it’s more. Some businesses, such as Apptio, Flexera, and ServiceNow, offer services to lower your cloud subscription costs.
They will not exist unless there is a real and pressing need for their offerings.
There’s also always the temptation to overprovision your cloud. If you decided to run things locally, you probably bought the most firepower you could get.
You know you’ll live with a server for at least three years and you want to be prepared for increased demand.
The same attitude doesn’t work in the cloud.
You should get what you need for your current workloads. When you need more, you’ll need to learn how to efficiently use auto-scaling, bin packing, right-sizing, and resource scheduling.
All this is difficult to master.
If, on the other hand, you buy a few servers, you, well, own them. So you don’t have to pay a monthly fee. Once these are paid, you can use that server until it goes up.
Managing them is also easier, compared to speaking.
Support
In-house IT help isn’t cheap, but neither is cloud support. Yes, all major public cloud providers offer free levels of cloud support, but, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for.
A related issue involves control. In local hardware, you control the horizontal, and you control the vertical. So yes, you can control most of what happens to your instances in the cloud, but you have even more control over your local hardware and software.
Keep apps in-house
If you have legacy applications running in place — and who doesn’t? — you don’t have to worry about porting them to the cloud.
As anyone who has tried to move a program to the cloud knows, it’s not easy.
Whether you’re trying to lift and move or refactor your application, it takes time and effort.
And, yes, money.
Bandwidth
Does your work require a lot of bandwidth?
If, say, you run a video production shop, the time it takes to transfer a scene back and forth from a cloud-based server can throttle your production.
For example, suppose you use Pixar RenderMan in-house to produce photorealistic 3D videos for your upcoming game; you can transfer data at up to 10 gigabits per second (Gbps) on your production LAN.
Sure, you can pay for an Internet connection to deliver that speed, but they don’t come cheap.
Privacy
Most cloud providers have gotten better about data privacy, but what’s more private than having all your data on-premises?
Yes, of course, storing sensitive data locally has its problems too, but at least you’ll know where to look if your customer data is missing.
And you’ll have your own backups if that happens. Right!?
What will work best for you depends on the factors above and more.
But the point I’m trying to make is that since everyone seems to be using the cloud, you don’t have to.
In fact, for many small businesses, local servers still make a lot of sense.
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