On-Premises
With the rise of cloud systems and software as a service (SaaS), or platform as a service (PaaS), it became necessary to define a term for the operation of software on local servers and hence not in the cloud. For that, the term On-Premises was established. The same term is also widely used for licensing models in which a licence is purchased for software that can be operated by the customer themselves.
On-Premises means that a system is operated on one's own territory, sphere or simply locally on one's own hardware or datacenter.
Challenges of on-premises operation
The biggest challenge with on-premises operation of software is the effort required to install and maintain it:
- Installation and maintenance need to be carried out by the operator, thus tying up resources
- Operation and update mechanisms differ from software to software, so expertise is needed
In addition, an infrastructure, e.g. a server, is needed to run the software. This in turn requires secure operation of the infrastructure, which includes, among other things protection against unauthorized access and the implementation of a backup and restore mechanism.
Hybride Cloud
Since both cloud services and on-premises software have their advantages and disadvantages, a hybrid form of the two approaches has developed: The so-called "hybrid cloud" combines the advantages of both approaches and reduces their disadvantages. You can find out more about this in our blog post on the subject.
On-Premises with Cloudogu EcoSystem
For the Cloudogu EcoSystem, On-Premises means that users install and operate their instance(s) in their own sphere, while the operation and the required hardware are solely up to the client of the Cloudogu EcoSystem. The client can decide whether he or she operates it on an own server or in a cloud datacenter. So, when we talk about an on-premises Cloudogu EcoSystem, we mean that it is not operated by Cloudogu, but it could be operated in a cloud.
Advantages of On-Premises
In addition to the simple and fast scaling of instances, users can fully decide and control what happens to their data. If users decide to operate their Cloudogu EcoSystem in a public cloud, this advantage is weakened.