Cloud or on your own server: what actually changes

A cloud based CMMS runs on the vendor’s machines and you reach it through a browser and a phone app. The old alternative was a server in your building that your IT team looked after. Almost everybody now buys the first one, and the reasons that matter are not the ones in the brochure.

What genuinely changes

• •Contractors and tenants can be given access without being given a place on your network
• •The phone app works from a car park, a customer site or a roof, not only inside the building
• •Upgrades happen without a project, which means you are never four versions behind
• •A second building or a second country is a settings change rather than a server

The contractor point is the one that pays. Most facility budgets are spent by people who do not work for you, and getting their work into your record is far harder when the record lives behind your firewall.

What does not change

Cloud does not make your data safer by itself, and it does not remove your obligations for it. It moves who is responsible for the machine, not who is responsible for the information.

Four questions worth asking any vendor

• •Where is the data held, in which country, and can you choose?
• •What happens if you leave: what format do you get, how fast, and at what cost?
• •What does the phone do when there is no signal, and how long can it hold work?
• •Who at the vendor can read your data, and what is logged when they do?

The fourth question separates serious vendors from the rest. Every provider has support staff who can see customer data at some point. The good ones can tell you exactly when that happens and show you the record of it.

The one case for keeping it in the building

Sites with a genuine air gap: some defence work, some utilities, some pharmaceutical plant networks. If that is you, you already know. For everybody else, the internal server is usually a habit rather than a requirement, and it is quietly expensive because somebody has to patch it forever.