Choosing the right hosting model for Learning Technology Infrastructure?
The choice of deployment or delivery model (to deploy/host the hardware and software) is one of the firsts to ponder upon while undertaking a Technology Infrastructure project for L&D. Not a straightforward decision anyway, the perplexity might just have been enhanced by the availability of diverse options (we’ll talk about them in a bit) available to the customers.
A company, while investing in the technology infrastructure, must look for a robust, scalable and cost-effective solution that offers the highest degree of availability, reliability and integrity, and befitting the business requirements and information security & business continuity commitments of the organization. The choice of the deployment/hosting model should take all these factors into equated consideration, right?
The choice of the hosting model usually needs to be made from the following listed options, and should be contingent upon a careful analysis of several factors:
1. Perpetual license based (internal hosting) – where a customer buys the perpetual licenses for the software and procures the hardware to deploy the solution in own premises (own network, behind the firewall)
2. External (third-party) hosting – where a customer buys the software licenses, however, delegating the deployment and operation to a third-party by paying regular fees for operation, upgrade and support
3. On-Demand Software (SaaS) – where a customer does not buy a software solution, instead, rents it from the provider. The provider hosts, maintains and supports the solution, and charges the customer for the use of an instance of the software tailored according to some specific needs of the customer
From a cost perspective, the On-Demand (SaaS) hosting model stands apart, as it involves neither the cost of license perpetuity, nor does it require any expenses on maintenance, upgrade and support of the deployed solution. It does incur a monthly fee (contingent upon usage) to be paid to the service provider; this usually is much lesser when compared to the entry cost and operating cost involved with the other two options.
Given the above, the On-Demand hosting model makes a pretty compelling proposition for most Learning Technology implementations. Then, why are we not seeing a significant surge in the number of companies (especially large enterprises) opting for this model?
Is leveraging the in-house IT capabilities and integration with org’s business processes, the reason; or perhaps a long-term view towards IT consolidation? Or, is it the lack of confidence in shifting the sensitive assets like PII (Personally Identifiable Information) outside the company’s firewall; or perhaps the fact that most Learning Management implementations are complex enough to require customizations that are beyond the scope of what configurable, On-Demand instances can support? Of course, there’s no one-size-fits-all reasoning, and a lot depends on organization’s priorities and readiness, but are there any which you would call as the primary drivers?And, what kind of shift, if any, do you foresee in the trend (especially for (global) enterprises) going forward?
