On Premise vs Cloud

Having implemented time and absence systems using completely different products and different methodologies for multiple clients, I try to explore the strengths and weaknesses of each. Time permitting this will be a series of blogposts and here goes the first one.

On Premise vs Cloud deployment:

The buzzword in town, for quite sometime now is 'Cloud computing'. There is no longer a debate on what is best approach for business applications, it is a given that in terms of both cost and efficiency that cloud is the way to go forward.

But there are major considerations for cloud deployment in HR space:

Data Protection Laws - Country regulations play a major role in this for eg: a country like Luxembourg will not allow specific employee data to be stored in data centres say in the US. As a client, if the cloud applications vendor does not have the infrastructure to deliver solution in a strict data compliance environment, is it worth investing in a product which cannot be deployed globally. As a vendor of cloud applications do you risk opening data centres in every corner of the world without knowing how much business you are actually going to make in that location with competition from local vendors. Do you even risk developing features in your product for specific regions without investing in infrastructure to deliver it?

As I write more countries are developing stronger data protection laws to safeguard against data snooping and theft.

Performance - Every company operates under its own umbrella of secure firewalls, but once you have your data in data centres readily accessible via internet, is it really more secure? Some would argue that yes the data is indeed more secure with a vendor but there are some drawbacks. How long will it take for data to travel across oceans and then again through firewalls after firewalls. Do you really want to compromise on a business application's performance? My guess is that it entirely depends on how critical the application is. With cloud deployment there is a definite degradation in system performance which is not entirely related to lack of better resources.

Skills - In a cloud deployment you neither own the application nor maintain it so you don't need to invest in resources with the technical know how and you are dependent on vendor resources to do the job for you. Gradually system knowledge gets concentrated in hands of a few and you can no longer get simple and cheap solutions without spending a fortune on it first.