How to Choose Between On-Premises & Cloud for App Back-end Hosting?

Though both on-premise and cloud hosting are popular, choosing between the two involves a set of crucial considerations. You need to consider a whole number of factors that come into play for making such a choice. This is why we are here to explain their differences, along with their respective pros and cons. 

What is On-premise hosting?

The on-premise software applications from their implementation to deployment in a specific context is done in-house or internally within an organization. The software maintenance, security and safety, and software updates are also carried out in-house.  

Just following the software purchase, everything is taken care of within the organization through additional servers, database software, and other operating systems. Since all these are done internally, there is no third-party involvement. 

Following this model, the hosting solutions can also be fully managed internally without needing any third-party support. From servers, data storage, management, and upkeep, all can be done internally within the organization’s premise. This is called on-premise hosting.

What is Cloud-based Hosting?  

Cloud computing refers to the delivery of computing resources as per demand, and this offers the businesses complete relief from their responsibilities of active management. 

The remote cloud computing servers and applications take care of too many businesses’ storage and processing power and deliver them computing output as per their requirements and demand. 

By purchasing a cloud-based subscription of the hosting solutions, the businesses don’t need to manage the infrastructure or licenses in-house. Now such cloud-based hosting solutions can be dedicated ones and shared ones. Though both ensure optimum data privacy and security, the former offers a bigger scope of customization.   

1. Differences in Respect of Cost 

The principal difference between on-premise cloud-based hosting is primarily its cost and pricing models.

When going for on-premise hosting, the business clients generally use dedicated in-house servers requiring a considerable upfront investment involving the purchase of servers, licensing cost, and managing a maintenance and support team. Moreover, to guarantee optimum scalability of the infrastructure, this model further involves adding more resources. 

Cloud-based hosting, on the other hand, involves little or zero upfront costs. Since the entire infrastructure belongs to the cloud service provider and the business client only needs to pay for rent, this reduces the cost burden. 

Apart from lowering cost, this pay-as-you-go model also ensures great flexibility as the clients only need to pay for the respective volume of usage or consumption or for the time of use. No wonder, in much small business dominated markets like India, cloud models are more popular. When it comes to hosting solutions for mobile app development boasts of a predominantly famous market for pay-as-you-go cloud services.  

2. Technical Challenges  

Another important factor that influences the choice is the king of technical challenges that an organization needs to handle. 

On-premise hosting needs to handle all internal physical computing resources on their own. From taking care of devices to the management and hiring of staff, this model needs to take care of everything from the ground up and hence here, and the technical challenges are bigger. 

In complete contrast, cloud-based hosting solutions are completely managed by the hosting service provider, and hence this needs the least minimum technical expertise of the business client. 

3. Scalability 

Since modern hosting requirements are continually evolving thanks to the ever-increasing demand, infrastructure flexibility to accommodate demands is a crucial consideration. 

Depending on on-location physical servers, on-premise hosting has a little scope of scaling up without adding more physical servers. When you depend on the hosting on-site, scaling up resources needs, always purchasing and deploying new servers. 

In complete contrast, Cloud computing provides far more superior scalability as the clients can easily opt for bigger consumption limits of server resources, bigger bandwidth, and usage. When fewer resources are needed, the clients can also scale down or shut down some servers to cut costs. 

4. Reliability

When it comes to reliability, on-premise hosting gas an edge as it can provide an application all the necessary functionalities irrespective of the internet connection. Since the data is managed in-house, it can be accessible at a faster speed. 

In contrast, cloud servers can only be accessed through the internet connection, and this makes them always vulnerable to less reliable performance depending on Internet connectivity. But modern-day cloud-based solutions are getting increasingly competent to keep such performance shortcomings to a minimum level. 

5. Customization

When it comes to customization, on-premise hosting offers a bigger scope just because the entire computing resources and staffing is being done internally and as per specific organizational needs. 

In contrast, cloud-based hosting solutions catering to a wider market focus more on stability, giving them less room to allow customization for each client. 

6. Data Security

Data security is a crucial aspect of going in favor of on-prem solutions. Since the data is stored and managed entirely in-house, the information remains less vulnerable to security breaches and outside threats. 

On the other hand, cloud-based hosting solutions take care of their customers’ critical data through large shared servers and so are more vulnerable to security threats. 

Conclusion 

To make the right choice between the two is challenging for many reasons. The only advisable thing is to do the research extensively. When opting for the cloud hosting model, ensure that the service provider is ready to work closely with the organization to take care of all the specific hosting and software needs. Always consider the long-term challenges, the organization’s road-map, the long term cost attributes and all the different factors and challenges we have mentioned so far.