Business environment across the world is rapidly transforming and adapting to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, that is changing the face of operations, customer service and data storage drastically. Even MNCs and Start-Ups are riding the new digital wave, by shedding away their old ways of working especially in the data storage and management function.
The massive shift in consumer base from offline to online mediums and to maintain such a high volume of traffic and data, these companies have strengthened not only the on-premise storage reserves such as data centres and massive quantum servers but are also dependent largely on the Cloud to easily access and manage data.
When it comes to hosting new applications, everyone is aware the cloud is the cost-effective way to host AI development, maintenance, and production. Often the best solution may depend on which stage the company is in their AI journey, the intensity of building the AI capabilities, and the strategic framework around it. Based on this there are certain factors that a company should keep in mind while hosting its AI Application, on-premise or on cloud.
Data Gravity: The most vital step before deciding to deploy AI application on-premise or on cloud platform, it is necessary to collect the appropriate data and operate it. Basically “Data Gravity” is the capacity of data to attract applications, services, and other data towards itself. There are no particular advantages or disadvantages of any hosting platform for AI Application. If the data resides on the cloud it is in the best interest of the organization to deploy AI application on cloud. On the other hand, if the data is in a set of servers-On-premise, it will be costly to transfer the AI application along with the data, hence on-premise transfer is more suitable.
Security: The data stored, is highly crucial and sensitive to a company’s core functions and vital information of customers and other businesses. Loss of this data by any means might hamper the reputation of the company and trust of the customers. Hence, regardless of the platform being secure is of prime importance. Therefore, hosting AI application on-premise, enables enterprises with full control over the data stored in-house, as hacking this data becomes difficult. To secure such AI applications on this platform, a team of expert and diligent employees is necessary, if not then the organization is exposed to multiple risks.
Sometimes organizations don’t have such resources, here the hosting providers is the best bet for such enterprises. When the application is handled by them the liability of securing the data shifts to these service providers. These providers keep their systems updated, encryptions in place and have technical experts at the company’s disposal, this in return minimizes the risk of data breach. The only drawback to outsourcing is that when the data is with a third party, the company may not know where it is stored and backed up. And such cloud based enlisted data and applications are always in the radar of hackers and is highly vulnerable to attacks.
Cost: Creating an AI application On-Premise and on cloud can be a cost extensive method. Training neural networks, creating algorithms for machine learning requires massive number of resources. Additionally, it is important to feed the AI application data to provide results real-time. Thus, these processes require huge funds to build and maintain the program. Often in such cases On-Premise is a better method as it consists of one-time cost and the company can keep building multiple AI applications with an on-premise cloud based on hardware storage capacity.
Thus, it is not a one-time decision to choose from cloud vs. on-premise hosting; that’s a question that needs consideration at multiple stages during the life cycle of the AI application. With growth the company may shift from on-premise to cloud or vice-versa. In the early stages of digital adoption, cloud will be the best option to test AI applications with low cost to experiment. And then, by assessing the requirement of the applications, enterprise can adapt, change, or gauge the hosting to on-premise if required.
Whether you’re managing high-performance computing workloads, handling sensitive data, deploying apps with massive transactional or API requirements, or simply seeking a high degree of control and flexibility in your cloud computing, networking and storage, Openstack Cloud Platform by Netweb offers the true production-grade cloud solution you need.
For more information: https://netwebcsp.com/openstack/
