Intro:

You’re listening to Dumbed Down Tech, where we break down tech concepts and we go back to the basics. As a Las Vegas Managed Service Provider, I know people often have tons of questions about storage; so today we are going to be talking about On-Prem vs Cloud-Based storage systems. On-Prem basically means a server, or computers, are available locally in the office, versus Cloud-Based systems that are hosted somewhere else in another location. The info is still on servers, but they aren’t your servers; you either rent them or purchase them and have them at a different location. This keeps your backed up information safe, in such instances as fires.

The Shift:

As a Las Vegas Managed Service Provider, I have seen the shift from On-Prem to Cloud-Based storage. In the past, everybody used to want to be on On-Prem; it was more desirable because it allowed information owners to have more control, be able to monitor their servers (and you knew they were in-house and who had access to them), etc. That was a great way to do it for a long time; however, IT professionals realized that there’s a point of failure, a single point of failure, which is that all the information is all in one building.

So, what happens if your office building catches on fire; or what happens if flooding or water damage occurs, getting on and frying your servers that contain all your information? Well, you’re pretty S.O.L.—so out of luck! Right?!?

IT professionals, including Las Vegas Managed Service Provider such as myself, got together and said we need something that will allow us to keep our data safe, and sufficiently backed up, while still being easily accessible in case of urgent need to access information. They started forming Cloud-Based storage services. Now, when most people hear Cloud-Based they think of it as a big old data farm somewhere secluded. But the reality is, it is just a lot of servers, or a lot of computers, put together in one data center. Even though the days of having a server in your office may be going away, it doesn’t mean that servers, in general, have gone away. They just moved to another location, such as a Google data center or a Switch data center, where they’re housed and monitored by bigger companies.

Pros:

Now, you may say…well, I still think that On-Prem is better because my information is in my office, and I have control and visual monitoring over it; but it isn’t better. I can confidently say that as a Las Vegas Managed Service Provider…

To hear the rest of this episode head here; and to check out Cloud-Based storage head here.