- Early in the business use of information technology,
all computing services were local.
Businesses would procure hardware and software
and because the first central systems such as mainframes
were rather large and created a lot of heat,
they were set up in a dedicated and temperature-cooled room.
More equipment was added to these rooms over time
and they became known as data centers.
X as a service is a form of data center
delivered through services.
So what might be some of the disadvantages of X as a service
when compared with owning your own on-premises data center?
Depending on the type of X as a service, for example with
software as a service, the customer may lose
a lot of control.
With SaaS, the quality of a shared infrastructure
also means being okay with unmodifiable services
that are for use by all customers.
While I've been complimentary of the integration
of X as a service solutions,
this can still be an area of concern.
Many large X as a service related implementations
have failed due to integration challenges.
Also, with X as a service architectures,
data portability can be a severe issue.
This refers to the ease of moving data partially
or completely out of one system for use in another.
This is often referred to as vendor lock-in
and it can be a pain point with SaaS.
A related concern is if a X as a service
provider suddenly folds.
If there is little warning,
this can really challenge customers.
While a problem that is becoming less of an issue,
some X as a service services can have poorer performance
than their on-premises equivalent,
particularly if the X as a service solution
has high bandwidth requirements.
In addition, any issues with the public internet,
including an outage can stop all work in its tracks.
Finally, a continuing debate is what platform
provides better cybersecurity?
Some argue that on-premises enables your own team to control
all access and defend from all attacks
and that by outsourcing to X as a service providers,
that guarantee is lost.
Proponents of X as a service argue
that the vendor is best positioned to protect their product
and infrastructure and they have the incentive
to invest heavily in cybersecurity.
If choosing between X as a service
or an on-premises solution is a decision
that you need to make, conduct a thorough evaluation
during the project planning phase,
and then weigh up the pros and cons.