Posted by Stéphane Trépanier, Hector Solutions d’Affaires 18-03-2021 04:12 PM

Installing servers in your office has always been the most viable and economical solution for a company. Is this solution still relevant today or are their alternatives to deploying on premise servers?

The cloud environment
Over the last two years, public cloud computing environment like the ones offered by Microsoft, Amazon and Google have grown at a rapid pace. Not only are these services more flexible and efficient, but also becoming less and less expensive over time. This alternative to local hosting can meet many of the current and future IT needs of companies of all sizes.

What are the benefits?

• Enjoy complete resource flexibility. No need to plan for disk space, memory or processors when purchasing a server. In a public cloud environment, these elements can be adapted to your needs or to the growth of your business.
• Get full redundancy of power supply and network connectivity. The average availability level of cloud computing services is 99.97%. This represents less than 3 hours of down time per year.
• Reduce expenses related to equipment, maintenance, parts replacement, electricity consumption and air conditioning.
• Pay only for what you consume and for the actual time of use. Some providers allow you to reduce your server resources during the night and thus reduce your costs during this period of reduced activity.
• For tax purposes, server or service hosting is an operating expense, and therefore tax deductible each year. Unlike the purchase of servers, which is a capital expense and depreciates over the years.

The hybrid environment
For some companies, public cloud hosting is not a viable option right now. You should know that it is possible to install certain cloud services and keep local servers at your offices. A hybrid environment may allow you a transition period before full cloud integration.

One thing is certain, local server and cloud hosting will be a necessary migration for companies that want to adapt quickly to this fundamental industry change. However, you should know that this perspective exists and that it will allow you to choose the best solution for the upcoming replacement of your servers. Do not hesitate to inquire with your IT team or with your Millenium Micro Affiliated Reseller nearest you.