On-premise infrastructure refers to IT systems, including hardware, software and data storage, that are physically located within an organisation’s facilities, such as office buildings or data centers. This is in contrast to cloud computing, where resources are managed off-site by third-party providers.

In order to sustain efficient operations, companies need to overcome a number of problems posed by on-premises infrastructure. These difficulties can be roughly divided into six categories: financial, scalability concerns, management complexity, security concerns, limited agility and innovation, and business continuity.

Challenge 1: High Capital and Operational Costs

  1. High Initial Costs: Hardware and software purchases and physical space are usually necessary for the setup of on-premise infrastructure. These upfront investments have a huge impact on the budgets, particularly for smaller and medium businesses.
  2. Ongoing Costs:  After the initial investment, companies need to cover costs for power, cooling and maintenance. Over time, these can add up quite a bit.

Challenge 2: Scalability issues

  1. Limited Scalability: Fixed resource capacities are a common feature of on-premise solutions. Buying extra hardware is necessary to increase capacity, and this can be expensive and time-consuming in comparison to the more flexible scaling alternatives offered by cloud environments.
  2. Resource Allocation: It can be challenging to plan ahead and allocate resources appropriately for peak capacity. During times of high demand, organisations may experience insufficient use of resources or insufficient capacity, both of which can cause operational disruptions and cost increases.

Challenge 3: Security and Compliance Concerns

  1. Vulnerability to Breaches: On-premise environments are vulnerable to security breaches, especially if the infrastructure is out-of-date or isn’t patched on a regular basis. Delays in essential updates cause many organisations to become more vulnerable to threats.
  2. Compliance Problems: It might be difficult to stay in compliance with laws that are always changing, like the GDPR. Companies have to make sure their on-premise systems adhere to these requirements, which can be difficult and resource-intensive.
  3. Human Error: Due to the difficulty of maintaining on-premise systems, mistakes like misconfigurations might occur and result in security flaws. All of the responsibility for security management lies with the organisation.

Challenge 4: Infrastructure Maintenance Complexity

  1. Maintenance and Upkeep: Continuous management, such as routine maintenance, hardware upgrades, software updates and security patches, is necessary for on-premise systems. To make sure everything goes as planned, this might be resource-intensive and requires a trained IT staff.
  2. Complexity of Upgrades: When several teams share resources, upgrading on-premise infrastructure can be difficult. Careful planning is necessary to coordinate improvements without interfering with ongoing tasks, which may cause downtime.

Challenge 5: Limited Agility and Innovation

    1. Adoption of news technologies: The design of on-premises infrastructure is typically based on a specific set of technologies and use cases, which can limit its flexibility in adapting to new solutions. When a company wishes to adopt new technologies, such as AI, machine learning, or advanced analytics, the existing infrastructure may not be able to support the new requirements. This lack of flexibility often requires businesses to invest in costly upgrades or replacements of hardware, software, and networking systems, which can delay the adoption process.
  • Deploying new solutions: Deploying new solutions in on-premises environments requires significant time and effort for infrastructure assessment, procurement, installation, testing, and ongoing management, often delaying innovation and stretching IT resources.

Challenge 6: Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

  1. Disaster Recovery: In an on-premise system, creating and executing successful disaster recovery plans is essential, but it can be difficult. To guard against data loss, organisations must make sure they have reliable backup solutions and redundancy mechanisms in place.
  2. Downtime and data loss in on-prem environments pose significant risks, including operational disruptions, financial losses, and potential damage to a company’s reputation due to the lack of real-time backup, redundancy, and disaster recovery capabilities.

What’s the alternative? 

Cloud infrastructure offers a viable alternative to on-prem environments by providing cost efficiency, scalability, enhanced security, and agility. With cloud solutions, businesses can reduce upfront capital investments, easily scale resources as needed, benefit from advanced security measures, and deploy new technologies rapidly without the delays associated with physical infrastructure, making it an attractive option for modern organisations. We, at evozon, are working with Cloud on a daily basis. If you want to learn more, for free, sign up here for a discussion. 

Final Thoughts

In conclusion, on-premises infrastructure presents a number of significant challenges for businesses, including high upfront and ongoing costs, limited scalability, complex maintenance requirements, security vulnerabilities, and obstacles to innovation. These issues can impede a company’s capacity to remain competitive and agile in today’s fast-paced market. As businesses increasingly seek alternatives, cloud infrastructure offers a more flexible, scalable, and cost-effective solution, enabling companies to focus on growth and innovation without being constrained by the limitations of traditional IT systems.