The Dilemma: On-Premise or Cloud Computing?

How important is business agility for your organization?

 Being able to expand compute resources almost immediately is no doubt a clear advantage of the cloud. With a solution from an  Ansys cloud-hosting partner, you can have a complete, turnkey simulation data center capable of serving your simulation needs in one-to-two days, instead of the months it takes to plan, order, install, provision, configure and test an on-premise solution.

Working in the cloud, you can also easily add new engineers. You don’t need to expand your HPC capacity or buy these users powerful new hardware: You just provide them with a login to the cloud portal. You can also start with a small, specific project and branch out as you gain confidence with the cloud, or as your on-premise resources are gradually decommissioned. Finally, you can also grow to serve global business needs by extending access to the same, consistent simulation platform to engineers in other geographical regions.
 

Do you have significant variations in your simulation workloads? 

The ability to scale up and down your computer and license capacity is another clear advantage of the cloud. The benefit here is that you get the right (i.e., Ansys application-specific) HPC resources you need, as much as you need, when you need it, and pay for only what you use in compute and license capacity. When an HPC job is submitted, the job runs without the long queue wait times that may happen with on-premise solutions. And, when the job is finished, the cloud computing servers can be shut down.

When you know your exact simulation workloads and don’t foresee any big variations in workloads, having access to capacity will likely be less important for you. In this case, the most cost-effective choice would likely be a dedicated, on-premise server and traditional lease or perpetual licenses.
 

Does your organization have Capex constraints? 

With on-premise computing, there are usually higher upfront capital expenditures (Capex and operations and upgrade costs, compared with cloud deployment requiring less infrastructure and support staff. With the on-premise option, you will need long-term planning and commitment of resources for scaling. In contrast, cloud solutions can be easily scaled up and down with little time and effort.

But these higher costs could be well justified if the cloud solution delivers more major benefits, including speed in product innovation, a marked increase in business agility and a continuously honed competitive edge.

How important is it to your organization to maintain a sense of control? I can mention here that corporate culture is likely an important part of the decision for maintaining the status quo or moving to off-premise computing. If a strong bias exists for keeping resources and expertise in-house, the easiest (but not necessarily the best) choice will likely be an on-premise solution.

Do you have plans to enlarge the geographical footprint of your organization? If this is the case, you’ll be more agile with a cloud solution and able to expand compute resources almost immediately. And, with cloud-hosting partners supporting global datacenters, you’ll have access anywhere in the world.

What’s the level of IT support available to you? If the level of IT support is minimal or nonexistent in your organization or you don’t want to involve your IT department in deploying HPC resources, you have two appealing options:

• You can contact our cloud-hosting partners that provide our customers with cloud HPC services. They can address occasional end-user burst capacity and/or full outsourcing of HPC. Some of these partners also provide software and services for private cloud users or customers who have a hybrid cloud strategy (e.g., deploying HPC on-premise) and excess capacity in the cloud.
• If you’re not ready for the cloud, you may also opt to join the HPC cluster appliance program. The program reduces the time and cost of acquisition and provides an Ansys-optimized system for higher efficiency. It also makes it easy to adopt and maintain HPC even if you don’t have IT support and resources because they will be managed (often remotely) by one of our HPC partners (i.e., system integrators like TotalCAE, TotaLinux or X-ISS).

If you can involve your IT department, then they will likely assume responsibility for hardware maintenance, availability of resources, software updates and disaster recovery.

Does your organization need to address big data analytics and/or internet of things (IoT)? The adoption of big data analytics and IoT compels the move toward cloud technology. According to International Data Corporation (IDC), “Within the next five years, more than 90 percent of all IoT data will be hosted on service provider platforms as cloud computing reduces the complexity of supporting IoT ‘Data Blending.’” If your organizational needs include big data and IoT, you will naturally want to invest in the cloud for engineering simulation.
 

What’s the level of customization required?

Key Takeaways

Let me conclude my blog with a few takeaways. First, cloud computing is becoming imperative as more and more customers are looking for ways to scale up HPC to run a greater number of faster, more complex simulations. Second, you need to ask yourself the above questions, weigh the options in light of your organizational goals, consider the differences between the cloud versus an on-premise solution and determine which is better for your organization and why. And last, but not least, on-premise and cloud choices aren’t mutually exclusive; it is obviously possible to have both!

I would be very interested to hear about your thoughts on cloud versus on-premise computing, and on other key questions you’ve been asking yourself. Thanks!