What to Consider When Choosing Between Self-Hosting and Cloud

The rise of cloud computing has been one of the biggest transformations in technology over the past decade. The Flexera 2021 State of the Cloud Report found that 92 percent of enterprises now have a multi-cloud strategy and 82 percent have a hybrid cloud strategy.

Even with those overwhelming numbers, there still exists a gap in cloud services. Many businesses—often because of security and regulatory concerns—need instant access to files and can’t risk any delay in connecting to the cloud. How can a financial firm, or manufacturing plant in a remote location, enjoy the same benefits as its counterparts in more populated areas?

Managed services like AWS Outposts and Azure Stack provide a partial solution, creating secure storage solutions for data that need to remain on-premises. Both services create a hybrid environment of local and cloud access, while still ensuring low-latency access.

Companies should consider hosting on their own servers or a private data center. This helps to bring the full benefits to those remote locations with demanding file access and storage requirements.

A self-hosted solution offers the same features and benefits around cloud offerings, but also allows companies to retain complete control over their data. Employees, customers, and clients can have instant access to the network via a web portal or mobile apps, without delays and without using VPN.

Data Sovereignty Considerations

Another emerging concern for companies moving to the cloud is the issue of data sovereignty—the idea that data is subject to the laws of the nation or region where it is collected.

For example, your company is based in the US and does business internationally, but your data might be hosted in Europe. That puts all of your critical business information under the legal rules and regulations of the EU.

What is complicating the matter is the fact that countries have different approaches to data privacy and those often conflict. With physical control over your data, you’re likely facing a number of security concerns.

An ideal solution would allow you to select the region of your choice for storing and processing data. A series of easy switches can activate a local or hybrid environment as well as the location where your data is stored. 

No Silver Bullet

Nearly every organization today runs on data and software. And the question of where their whole IT environment lives has become more and more complex.

There’s still no silver bullet solution for hosting, but it’s becoming more evident that forward-thinking companies are opting for solutions that give them the most control.