When it comes to hosting enterprise’s IT infrastructures, there are two major options for business leaders, the cloud and data center. A traditional data center is on premises that data is accessed through a local network, it is typically maintained by in-house IT specialists. Cloud computing, on the other hand, is essentially a remote version of data center which allow business to access the data through the internet. In this article, some difference between cloud and data center will be outlined for your reference.
Cost Saving
Cloud computing comes with obvious cost-saving and this is the driven for many businesses to move to the cloud for years. Cloud users only need to pay for their needs and cloud usage without any advance investments on hardware and software infrastructures that will be outdated.
Scalability & Deployment Time
Scalability is another selling point of cloud. A traditional data center involves some time-consuming work to bring additional server online, and that time lost may eventually affect your business. However, it takes only 10 mins to deploy a new cloud server which allow users to resize cloud servers to meet changing needs.
Data Security
For sure that datacenter provide user with complete control which is not possible in cloud computing. However, many popular cloud providers do also deliver superior data security to users, like 24/7 supports and user permission management. Thus, a trustable cloud provider is the key of data protection.
Accessibility
Unlike placing the data in traditional data center, users can upload and download files even they do not have the particular devices on hand with cloud computing, it allows businesses to achieve remote working business model which has been proven beneficial to business efficiency and productivity.
Disaster Recovery
Cloud provides offer multiple solutions for users to completely safeguard business data from disasters. The rationale behind those recovery solutions are that data is free to transfer from cloud to cloud, it can be automatically copied to a backup server to minimize the recovery time objective.
Geo Restrictions
To cope with global expansion, sometimes businesses need to move the data to local network in order to speed up the website or comply with local regulations. Deploying a new cloud server in a new country or region is as simple as selecting the location from a drop-down menu.
Technology Choice
There is no restriction on software and hardware with datacenter. Users can install with a specific graphics accelerator or hardware security module to meet businesses’ operation needs. The technology choice of datacenter, in fact, is more extensive then cloud computing as users do not “complete control” the cloud.
Although cloud computing is the business trend in recent years, it is not easy to judge which option is better than the other as they both have their own strengths, enterprises should evaluate the business needs and decide to use the most effective and efficient way.
