On premises
On-Premises or On-Prem ( on your own premises , on site or locally ) refers to a usage and license model for server-based computer programs (software). Until around 2010, local use or licensing for local use of software was the norm and therefore had no special designation. Only since local use has increasingly been supplanted by software as a service (SaaS) or cloud computing has the term off-premises emerged as an antonym .
In the case of commercial on-prem software, the licensee acquires or leases software and operates it under his own responsibility on his own hardware, possibly in his own data center or on the rented servers of a third-party data center, in any case on hardware that is not provided by the software provider provided. In addition to the acquisition and operating costs, additional maintenance fees are usually incurred in order to involve the customer in the further development of the software by the provider or to secure further support from the manufacturer.
There is no warranty claim for open source software ; the customer relies on the developer community to provide support for the software, develop it further, and fix bugs. Alternatively, he can purchase support separately from appropriate service providers in the open source environment. Operation and customization options behave similarly to commercial software.
chances and risks
On-prem offers the frequently used option of adapting software specifically to the area of application and, in some cases, considerably expanding it. Here, third parties are usually involved for adaptation and operation by the licensee. This is usually seen as an advantage in order to cover customer-specific challenges with standard software as a central component. However, this is not only associated with considerable costs for this adaptation, which often exceeds the license fees many times over, but also the risk on the part of the customer that the provider will only further develop the software at a later date with further considerable effort and costs resulting from updating the Adaptation to use.
The opposite model is the purchase of the software as a service (software as a service) including the responsibility for operation and maintenance from the provider. Almost exclusively usage-based or time-based contracts have prevailed. The adaptation options are also necessary here, but are usually implemented as part of the service itself ( configuration , APIs , optional third-party modules). While with on-prem the purchase and thus considerable burdens lie with the customer, with cloud computing an offer predominates which, in addition to software, also covers hardware, operation, management costs, maintenance and possibly also usage variance at correspondingly different costs.
Every IT system usually has to process and persist data . In the on-prem case, this data is still with the customer in the data center provided for this purpose. If the software is offered as a cloud service or as software as a service, data is usually also kept on this system. This results in an important decision criterion for choosing between SaaS / cloud computing and on-prem. While outsourcing contracts generally have to be concluded for cloud services, this is not necessary in the on-prem case if the company operates its own data center. In this context, it is also decisive whether the cloud servers are located in Germany - and are therefore subject to the respective national data protection law - or whether they are located abroad (e.g. in the USA ). It is also crucial whether the cloud server belongs to a US company (in which case US authorities can access data even if the servers are located outside the US; see CLOUD Act ) or not.
Single-user software
Installation and usage-specific aspects also apply to software for pure single-user computers , but the term on-prem is usually used for software that is multi-user and network-compatible.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Often referred to as "on-premise software" in German. This is not correct in English because "premises" is a plural word in the sense of a place . See Paul Brians: Common Errors in English Usage 2013: " premise / premises "
- ↑ Linguee translation: on premises
- ↑ Linguee translation: on premises solution