Many businesses are starting to realize the potential of coupling the Cloud with intranet software. Cloud-based SaaS model for corporate enterprise intranets is now considered a worthy investment by businesses. Intranet software development is a booming business. However, many businesses are still reluctant to shift to cloud-based intranet, mostly because they have a wrong idea about the various factors associated with moving to the cloud.

The matter needs careful consideration as we are not talking about a free cloud service account that might suit singular business purposes. 

Why are they reluctant to shift to the cloud?

Primarily because of the fact that intranet is an enterprise software. An enterprise software houses confidential data including employee and customer information, intellectual property, corporate goals, financial information etc. Shifting to cloud means sacrificing some amount of your control on the software and data, as all the sensitive information will go online.

Let’s consider a couple of other factors.

High long-term cost - A cloud-based intranet model normally comes at a price that is to be paid either monthly or annually. And once you sign up for the service, and all your confidential data goes online, it’s unlikely that you will cancel the service when you want to, as it poses a risk of data loss.

You don’t own the software now unlike your on-premise intranet system. The cloud service provider does. An on-premise system tailored to your requirements can be owned with a one-time payment. Although cloud-based systems have a lot of advantages of their own, most companies are likely to avail the service for at least 5 years. 

In these five years, an SMB (small-mid scale businesses) with a considerable number of employees feeds copious amounts of data to the cloud incurring a cost which might not appear as a capital expense at first glance. But for the period of 5 years, the actual total expense for the cloud-based system would be a big amount. 

Scaling it up is expensive – A cloud-based intranet is completely capable of growing with your business adding to its benefits. However, scaling it up is expensive. 

The 5 years’ expense example mentioned above did not consider the employee growth statistics but assumed a constant (but high) number of employees. If you consider the growth rate of employees, scaling up costs for the system will keep piling up. 

On-premise intranet systems require only a one-time payment and is more easily scalable. 

Less Secure. More Risky - On the bright side, you won’t have to worry about bulky hardware equipment for the organizational software in your premises when you are on the cloud. However if you think your data is safer with a responsible cloud service provider, you couldn’t be more wrong.

If the service provider is compromised, you won’t be able to access your intranet or the data in the cloud for days. And then there is a risk of DDOS attacks (which are more prevalent now). These are just a few reasons why many businesses feel that cloud is insecure.

You are not in control - An intranet service provider generally uses one code bases for all their client databases. This way, it is easier for them to fix bugs and do maintenance, as it affects all customers. 

The downside to you is that you are not in control of this. The provider will have a preset schedule for updates. You have no control over when the updates arrive or what they change. You won’t be knowing about the change in the features of your cloud-based intranet software, while on-premise systems give you more control as to what you want in an update and when you want it.

End-note

This article is not about why you shouldn’t choose cloud-based intranet service. It’s a hot trend now and many businesses are investing in intranet software development. This is just to remind you of the various factors you need to consider before shifting to a SaaS model intranet.