So first to the basics: at the most fundamental level, the terms on-prem, private and public cloud are about different ways in which and places where data - which for a piece of software forms the hub, as it were - is stored. The various expressions are therefore about different ways of using software, that is, different software usage models. With the on-prem variant, in full «on-premises», the data - that is, the software - is hosted, in other words stored, on the company's own servers. The counter-model to the on-prem solution is the cloud solution. Here the software is hosted not on the company's own servers but on external ones, for example in a data centre. Within the cloud solution a further distinction can be made between the private and the public cloud: whereas with the private cloud solution each user has their own server in the data centre for their software, with the public cloud the data of several users is stored on one server and is therefore kept separate within that server.
So much for the broad differences between the on-prem, private and public cloud models. These different forms of software usage also go hand in hand with different ways in which the databases have to be set up, or the software programmed: between on-prem and private cloud the place where the data is stored changes, namely the company's own server vs. an external server, but the manner of programming stays the same, because the data is still stored on individual servers. Between private and public cloud, by contrast, the place where the data is stored does not differ, since both are hosted externally, for example in a data centre. However, a change to the system architecture makes sense here, because in the public cloud the data should be altered in structure and optimised for cloud use in such a way that it can be stored separately from other users' data within one server. Which model is to be used therefore already makes a big difference to how the software is programmed.
After this short introduction to on-prem, private and public cloud, in the next articles we will look more closely at the differences between the three usage models, examine the advantages and disadvantages of each model and finally take a look at what the software architecture at Vanillaplan looks like.
IT made easy: on-prem, private cloud, public cloud?
by Elena Höppner Content MarketingPublished on 3/24/2022
«Vanillaplan as a cloud-based software solution» - in many places at Vanillaplan you will find something about cloud technology as a mark of quality, along with the above-average data security and performance associated with it. But what exactly does that actually mean - and where do the differences, advantages or perhaps also disadvantages lie compared with on-prem? Since most of us - quite unlike our development team - are not IT specialists and do not know all that precisely what terms like cloud hosting, private or public cloud mean, we would like to look at this topic in our articles this month. And to do so in a way that gives non-IT people a chance of understanding and of learning something.
