When it comes to reviewing and evaluating storage considerations, business leaders are faced with a critical decision that could affect the future success and security of the business.
It’s clear that security is an essential pillar for organisations in not only preventing future attacks to critical infrastructure but to prevent the loss of personal or private data. As a result, a growing number of enterprises are discovering that on-premises server storage offers compelling advantages that cloud solutions simply cannot match.
Ensuring data sovereignty and compliancy for regulated industries
With GDPR regulations and new UK data protection rules constantly changing and adapting, on-premises storage provides absolute control over data location and access. This is paramount for highly regulated industries such as government or defence who have strict data laws and regulations in place. The further benefit to managing location is that organisations are also able to control the physical security of a server or data centre. Organisations can put in place CCTV monitoring and even implementing biometric and key card access to not only deter inbound threats but also prevent intruders from gaining access and stealing sensitive company or customer data.
Outside of data sovereignty, UK businesses can ensure compliance without relying on third-party assurances or agree complex international data transfer agreements, challenges commonly associated with cloud storage. This enables organisations to customise compliancy for specific industries or sectors, which is particularly important when dealing with customers in different regions around the world.
Powering high-performance systems while prioritising low latency
By far one of the key advantages of on-premises storage is the uptick in performance and low latency. Due to the data being physically closer to users and associated applications, the speed of data transfer is unmatched, often a matter of milliseconds, especially over a high-speed local area network (LAN). For latency-sensitive applications, local storage eliminates the need for internet connectivity or geographic location. This means systems can continue uninterrupted during the event of an outage or power cut, increasing continuity of service and ensuring 24/7 operations. This is highly important for organisations operating across financial services and trading, healthcare and medical imaging, manufacturing and defence. These sectors require rapid access times that cloud storage can’t match.
Enhancing security posture and future resilience to attacks
As we’ve seen from recent hi-profile ransomware attacks causing impact across multiple sectors and industries, it’s clear that organisations need to increase their defences and increase security resilience against future attacks. On-premises storage eliminates shared responsibility models and third-party vulnerabilities that are often the root cause of cyber-attacks and security being compromised. Much like the benefits obtained in controlling the physical security of servers or data centres, organisations also maintain complete control over encryption keys, access logs, and security protocols without needing to trust external providers with handling sensitive data under NDA.
Although LANs are not immune to cyber-attacks, there is a lower risk from an external attack due to the ability for on-prem systems to be isolated from public networks. Systems can also be kept behind firewalls giving fewer opportunities for automated AI bots or opportunistic attackers to target any vulnerabilities and gain unwarranted access. With valuable data and information isolated via a single or collection of servers across on-prem infrastructure, when comparing this to cloud storage, the risks are heightened. Cloud providers can be common targets for threat actors with the risk to reward being much higher as successful attacks result in access to multiple organisations’ data rather than just one.
A more predictable cost structure for future growth
While cloud storage appears cost-effective initially, enterprises frequently encounter a rise in monthly costs as data volumes and access patterns expand across the business. On-premises infrastructure delivers predictable capital expenditure with no hidden fees, bandwidth charges, or surprise application programming interface (API) costs that can multiply monthly cloud bills.
On-prem provides a much clearer and predictable cost structure in the long-term through a one-time hardware investment. From here there are no monthly fees for usage, storage and bandwidth, in comparison to cloud providers who charge costly recurring fees to store data. Further to this, the cost is two-fold, there are also no egress or API fees meaning you don’t need to pay to retrieve your data. Therefore, not only do you need to pay monthly storage costs, but you also need to pay to access your data.
While cloud storage promises flexibility and scalability for businesses, compromising on control through an increase in monthly costs means a growing number of UK enterprises are turning to on-premises solutions. From the necessity to maintain data sovereignty and meet stringent compliance requirements, to the demand for ultra-low latency and high-performance operations, on-premises infrastructure offers a level of control that cloud often can’t replicate. In an era where digital infrastructure is increasingly critical to competitive advantage, UK organisations are recognising that storage solutions are fundamental and need to align with ongoing priorities of the business.
