6 reasons why the Cloud beats in-house systems

Flexibility Cloud services can be upgraded or downgraded, started or suspended according to requirements. Say you have an unusually large project that requires more storage or functionality than you usually use, that's no problem. You can just increase what you use to meet your needs at that time (you certainly can with Aframe). If you no longer need a service, that's also no problem you can just cancel the service.

When setting up in-house, hardware and software have to be bought and set up but you're then stuck with them whether you still need them or not servers, racks, software can sit unused, gathering dust. And it's not often possible or quick to boost systems on a temporary basis.

Access Whether cloud services use browser based interfaces or their own applications, because the data is stored in the cloud it can be accessed by anyone from any location (providing they have the right access permissions).

In-house, hardware tends to be sat within a restricted access network environment. Data is stored on local hard drives meaning it can only be accessed from that specific computer, or has to be carried around on portable drives. Even if there are networked drives, you still have to be within the network to get to the files.

Maintenance When you subscribe to a cloud service, you are also buying the support and maintenance required to keep it running. This is great from your point of view as it puts all the responsibility on the vendor. Quite simply, it's crucial to our business that our customers can always access our service 24/7 if they couldn't then they would stop using us so we invest a lot of time and effort into ensuring that happens.

In-house, that responsibility rests with you. You need to take care of the maintenance of your systems and often this means you have to invest in support teams or buy in support from outside. All of this is on top of the initial investments in equipment and software you've already made.

Security and backup Like all cloud service providers, we've invested in robust, failsafe back-up systems to ensure your data is always safe and we demonstrate that commitment with our service level agreements. And of course, we've put in a lot of effort to ensure our datacenters are as secure as possible (so secure we've recently been recognised by FACT).

When your systems are in-house, it's your responsibility to ensure they are secure and robustly backed up. Again, this means further costs on top of your initial investments and more time and resources.

Upgrades and development Our business depends on us being able to offer services that don't just meet but exceed the expectations of our customers. So our developers are constantly working on Aframe updating it to meet the evolving needs of video technology and designing and building new features (such as our upcoming Logger app) to make it even better. And we're constantly investing in new and better hardware in our datacenters.

Upgrading in-house systems can be a long and costly business and it often just doesn't happen. Even when it does, it may only be on an annual basis as new budgets become available or IT teams wait until the initial batch of post-launch bugs are addressed by the vendors. And then there's the hassle of ensuring new versions work with your legacy systems.

Cost The over-riding theme throughout these points is the difference in cost. Compared to setting up your own in-house solution, cloud services are always significantly more cost effective it's why so many businesses are moving to these kind of services.

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