Intel CTO and Fellow Steve Grobman asked the question – is on-premises dead at the recent Intel Focus 15 conference.
Grobman says “The answer is no but someday we’ll get there”.
It’s interesting as many companies that are just starting out are able to do almost everything they need using cloud infrastructure and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications. Certainly, if I was starting a new business today, I’d stump up for very little on-premises infrastructure.
Grobman qualified the statement saying there will almost always be a case for some local computing capability to complement online services. This is because the both have unique benefits.
“Cloud, almost by definition, is the only environment that is going to be able to do things like work with cross-organisation data. On-premises has some unique capabilities as well. Being able to customise for your environment, at least for the time being, is better done on premises”.
Of course, there are other issues around the cloud such as regulatory obligations around where data is held and the protection of IP.
So, the short answer is on-premises will be around for the foreseeable future. But if you’re responsible for your business’ technology strategy and you’re currently largely an on-prem environment the time will soon come where the decision will start to shift from asking “is the cloud the best option” to “is on-premises the best option”.
Where are you on that journey?
Comments
2 responses to “Is On-Premises Dead?”
Agreed, no it’s not but soon will get to the point where having something like a server on site won’t be required. Small businesses can basically do it now if they wish to spend the moment with the help of Azure but big businesses…that’s another story
Still too many issues. Internet speeds, internet Data costs. Slow file access, authentication, printing. The lose of ownership of the data that is now in the cloud.
We still don’t see any services that allow you to move from one cloud provider to another. Once your systems are in, you need to build them again if you want to move cloud providers