On-Premises Cloud: Is It Right for Your Business?

Usually, when you think about cloud services, you might envision a third-party, such as AWS, that provides cloud computing resources from its facilities off-premises. The term on-premises cloud, therefore, might seem like an oxymoron.

An on-premises cloud refers to a type of private cloud where the customer manages the IT infrastructure on-site. A private cloud is a single-tenant cloud, meaning it serves only one customer.

This setup contrasts with the public cloud, where a third party hosts cloud infrastructure and provides services over the internet. With public cloud services, multiple customers use shared physical servers as well as other hardware and software.

In contrast, an on-premises cloud is a private cloud solution where all IT components, including virtual machines and servers, live on the customer's premises.

Below, we break down the advantages and disadvantages of the on-premises cloud.

1. Cost

One of the most notable drawbacks to the on-premises cloud is the cost of buying and maintaining IT infrastructure. Since you run the data center, you must acquire the proper hardware, servers, software, and storage systems to meet high-performance computing (HPC) requirements. 

Public clouds or hosted environments operate at extremely large scales, leveraging vast economies of scale. They are able to provide the same services at lower operational costs than a smaller on-premises environment.

2. Disaster Recovery

If your system fails or a disaster occurs, you must have a backup for your data. In other cloud models, the cloud provider might handle recovery. With public clouds, you also have access to multiple geographic regions to distribute your risk of a disaster impacting your business.

3. Staffing

As well as purchasing the equipment and software licenses, you'll need staff to run and maintain the infrastructure with an on-premises cloud.

4. Security

Because you own the infrastructure with an on-premises cloud, you can keep your sensitive and proprietary data secure. With a hosted private cloud, though, you must rely on the cloud provider for security. This difference is particularly significant if you have intellectual property (IP) you want to protect.

Synopsys Cloud provides a “bring your own cloud” (BYOC) deployment option to chip design businesses. This option is available with the top 3 cloud providers:

• Microsoft Azure
• AWS
• Google Cloud

Using the BYOC option, you can work with the public cloud provider of your choice to maintain control over your cloud environment. Concurrently, you can take advantage of unlimited access to our cloud-based electronic design automation (EDA) tools through our FlexEDA pay-per-use pricing model. Since you have full control over your cloud environment, you can also deploy complex multi-vendor EDA flows for your chip design needs.

Synopsys Cloud also provides a SaaS deployment option for customers who want to leverage our pre-configured and optimized tool access environment, including EDA software, configuration scripts, design kits, IP, optimized HPC, and an emulation infrastructure tailored to each specific EDA workload. We have also cloud-enabled our EDA tools and optimized shared storage technology to deliver a cost-optimized HPC infrastructure.

Synopsys is the industry’s largest provider of electronic design automation (EDA) technology used in the design and verification of semiconductor devices, or chips. With Synopsys Cloud, we’re taking EDA to new heights, combining the availability of advanced compute and storage infrastructure with unlimited access to EDA software licenses on-demand so you can focus on what you do best – designing chips, faster. Delivering cloud-native EDA tools and pre-optimized hardware platforms, an extremely flexible business model, and a modern customer experience, Synopsys has reimagined the future of chip design on the cloud, without disrupting proven workflows.

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Synopsys technology drives innovations that change how people work and play using high-performance silicon chips. Let Synopsys power your innovation journey with cloud-based EDA tools. Sign up to try Synopsys Cloud for free!