Going for cloud-based solutions has been all the hype in recent years and who wouldn’t want to head towards that direction? With cloud deployments potentially saving you money and resources and increasing your flexibility, why wouldn’t you make that move?
The decision between cloud and on-premise is generally in forefront of the mind for most CIOs especially when they embark on a SharePoint project. SharePoint Online offers compelling reasons such as quicker deployment and better platform management and upgrades. However, we have listed the five top scenarios where keeping it on-premises would make more sense for your business.
#1 Third-party application integration
One of the inherent challenges of a multi-tenanted public cloud solution is that you have limited control over underlying application's integration options, which may be a concern with the SharePoint Online option if your business requires SharePoint's integration with other third-party applications.
#2 Need for significant customisation
There are many possibilities for customising a SharePoint-based application to allow it to serve specific functions in the business, but you can only perform a significant amount of coded customisations with on-premise. With SharePoint Online, since organisations do not have access to code their customisations fully, they can mostly only perform custom configurations.
#3 Insufficient Internet bandwidth
With everything stored in the cloud, your users will be heavily dependent on internet bandwidth. While the availability of the National Broadband Network (NBN) has changed the scenario for some businesses, there is still a reasonable number of organisations that struggle to get the decent bandwidth required to support a cloud-based deployment. If you are one of them, then keeping SharePoint on-premises is likely to be a better option.
#4 Compliance to data residency
With SharePoint Online hosted globally across different data centre locations, it poses concerns around data residency where businesses are required to inform its users where their data resides locally. If your business belongs to an industry that has strict compliance regarding data residency, then keeping it on-premises should be the default option to get the level of comfort that you need.
#5 Already own SharePoint licenses and Infrastructure
SharePoint Online looks very competitive if it is compared to the total investment required to acquire server infrastructure, licenses and other associated costs to manage the environment. However, if you have already made investments in these areas and your infrastructure is scalable, it may turn out to be more cost effective to leverage existing investments initially.
Let us help you make a choice
Still have questions about what will best suit your organisation’s needs? We have helped our customers make better choices with their SharePoint deployment strategy and their overall IT investments. If you need further assistance in deciding on these options, contact us to schedule a free consultation with one of our SharePoint experts.
