What Is On-Premise vs. Cloud Computing?

In deciding on a solution related to IT infrastructure, the decision point pertains to the various options related either to traditional on-premise or cloud-based infrastructure. Understanding the fundamental differences between these two approaches will help form the basis of your decision-making relative to your company’s needs and goals.
On-premise infrastructure generally represents the older, “more traditional” way of hosting hardware, any accompanying operating systems, software, and application(s) in the physical footprint of the organization. This option comes with the full expectation that organizations will own their own servers, storage, network equipment, and supporting pieces of physical infrastructure (cooling units, power distribution units, and so on). More often than not, the responsibility for management, maintenance, and security is undertaken by the organization; generally, it is recommended that the organization’s IT team assume the primary, if not full, responsibility.
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing services over the Internet. It allows organizations to leverage computing services without having to incur the cost of owning the physical infrastructure. In the cloud vs. on-premise argument, cloud solutions provide computing services – servers, storage, databases, networking, software, and analytics – that are owned and operated by third parties. Many businesses are finding that working with a partner who offers comprehensive managed cloud services can greatly simplify this transition and ongoing operations. Users can tap into these on-demand resources and scale up or down as their needs change and only pay for what they use.
The decision to use either cloud or on-premise deployment is a related decision to the fundamentals exposed above about how nearly every aspect of an organization’s IT architecture and operations will work, including cost structure, security model, and options for scalability and maintenance.