By Ocient Staff
Great Scott! The future of the most complex data analysis on the planet just might look a lot like the past.
If you’re reading this blog, you’re a data geek like us and already know that the early 2010s saw the rise of the public cloud for analytics, when tools like Snowflake and Redshift ushered in an era of scalability, flexibility, and ease of use — or at least that’s how they were marketed.
While these cloud solutions were initially a boon to enterprise data teams, as data volumes exploded, costs quickly became a concern. Auto-scaling to meet increasing demand often led to surprising and unsustainable OPEX expenditures.
Meanwhile, in highly regulated and data-intensive industries such as telco and government, many IT leaders never had the option to leave on premises and have continued to rely on legacy solutions to handle their most business-critical workloads. While they may be feeling some relief after not jumping all in on the cloud bandwagon, these same IT leaders know it’s time to upgrade and are now looking for ways to lower costs, analyze all their data, and achieve unprecedented performance.
Enter Ocient for On Premises, end-to-end solutions powered by the Ocient Hyperscale Data Warehouse™, a game-changing analytics platform built for scale. Ocient empowers businesses to tackle modern data problems by delivering exceptional performance while reducing total cost of ownership (TCO), system sizing, and energy consumption by 50-90% compared to other solutions.
Let’s dive into the resurgence of on-prem analytics, now bolstered by innovative solution providers like Ocient.
Cloud vs. On Prem: Why Repatriate?
At first glance, the cloud’s pay-as-you-go model seems perfect—especially for startups seeking agility. But once analytics become a daily necessity, significant cost overruns can emerge.
Case in point: In 2022, 37Signals (maker of Basecamp) reported a staggering $3.2 million annual cloud bill, an average of $266,000 per month. Even with cost-optimization efforts, expenses remained high. By investing approximately $600,000 in on-premises hardware and managed hosting, 37Signals projected savings exceeding $7 million over five years.
This scenario isn’t unique. According to Veritas Research, roughly 94% of companies outspend their initial cloud budgets due to underutilized resources or over-provisioned capacities. Recognizing these challenges, forward-thinking organizations are exploring alternatives like Ocient, which combines its ultra-efficient Compute Adjacent Storage Architecture® with expert solutions engineering to help businesses rein in costs without sacrificing performance.
Taking Pride in Legacy, On-Prem Solutions
Despite the growing shift to cloud-based data solutions, many companies continue to rely on on-premises data analytics platforms such as Hive/HDFS (Cloudera or open source), Teradata, Vertica, Elasticsearch/OpenSearch, Netezza, Druid, Spark SQL, and ClickHouse.
These organizations often have significant existing investments in infrastructure, tooling, and expertise, making migration to the cloud costly and complex. Performance and control are also key factors—on-premises deployments allow for predictable latency, direct hardware optimization, and tighter security controls, particularly for industries with stringent data governance requirements. Additionally, some workloads, such as large-scale batch processing or high-performance analytical queries, may still perform more efficiently on dedicated on-prem infrastructure. For companies handling sensitive or regulated data, keeping analytics in house reduces compliance risks and offers greater visibility into data access and processing. While cloud adoption continues to rise, on-premises solutions remain a viable and strategic choice for organizations prioritizing performance, cost predictability, and control over their data environments.
When On-Prem Makes Sense
- Financial Services: Real-time, sub-millisecond latency for algorithmic trading or fraud detection is essential. Ocient for On Prem eliminates cloud-based delays, providing the necessary speed for high-stakes environments.
- Telecom & AdTech: Compute-intensive environments for real-time bidding and personalized customer interactions demand predictable costs and ultra-high throughput—such as when analyzing call detail records and logs—both of which are strengths of Ocient for On Prem.
- Government & Regulated Industries: Compliance and data sovereignty concerns often rule out public cloud infrastructures. Ocient for On Prem solutions offer better control and security for these sectors.
Back to the Future: Marrying A Modern Software Architecture with Cutting Edge Hardware
Ocient for On Prem alleviates common on-premises pain points by leveraging advanced technologies such as core-heavy CPUs, PCIe-enabled NVMe SSDs, and SQL optimizations that drastically speed up data workloads. The result? Businesses can do more with fewer servers, significantly reducing system footprint while enhancing query performance.
For example, integrating our Compute Adjacent Storage Architecture allows Ocient for On Prem systems to achieve significant performance gains. Traditional cloud setups often rely on slow SATA drives or separated environments where data is stored in S3 buckets and accessed over the network—both of which create bottlenecks. Ocient’s architecture eliminates these issues, unlocking a new level of speed and efficiency for enterprise-scale analytics.
Advanced Technologies to Match Your Data Ambitions
Ocient hardware utilizes AMD EPYC processors, which deliver significant advantages for compute-intensive workloads:
- More cores per socket than leading competitors, enabling better performance for multi-threaded tasks like big data analytics.
- Lower energy consumption, reducing operational costs while supporting sustainability initiatives.
- Improved data transfer rates with PCIe 4.0 and 5.0, ensuring high-speed storage performance for even the largest datasets.
By aligning with modern advancements in hardware and compute design, Ocient empowers organizations to take full advantage of energy-efficient processors, drastically cut costs, and optimize workloads—all while managing fewer physical servers to achieve the same, if not better, results.
More Efficient Compute and Storage Delivered in a Single Platform
Storage is often the bottleneck in analytics. While typical hard drives sustain read speeds of 255MB/s and around 217 IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second), modern PCIe NVMe SSDs used in Ocient solutions can achieve up to 7,000MB/s read speeds and 935,000 IOPS.
The result is near-instantaneous data access, even for massive datasets.
Ocient’s Compute Adjacent Storage Architecture capitalizes on this speed by reducing the need to move data across networks, resulting in faster queries and real-time insights. Clients who switch to Ocient often experience:
- 50-90% reductions in rack units and floor tile space, cutting down their physical infrastructure needs.
- Significant gains in query processing speeds, particularly for complex analytics requiring large-scale data processing.
- Reduced energy consumption, supporting a more sustainable approach to data infrastructure.
Take Back Control with Ocient Managed Services
One reason businesses migrated to the cloud was its promise to reduce the IT burden. But with Ocient, organizations no longer have to compromise between control and convenience. Ocient offers comprehensive solutions architecture and management services designed to streamline migration, minimize risks, and ensure clients can tap into the full power of their new analytics platform with ease.
Businesses relying on Ocient for On Prem no longer need expansive IT teams to oversee daily operations. Instead, they gain reliability, scalability, and performance optimizations—all while staying firmly in control of their data environment.
Reimagine On-Prem Data Analytics at Scale with Ocient
The cloud vs. on-prem debate is always evolving, but it is clear that public cloud solutions, while innovative, are no longer the only answer for today’s data challenges. On-prem analytics solutions, powered by cutting-edge technology like the Ocient Hyperscale Data Warehouse, provide businesses with the tools they need to drive operational efficiency, reduce costs, and deliver groundbreaking insights without compromise.
If you’re ready to unlock the full performance of your data, take advantage of Ocient for On Prem’s differentiated capabilities today. Contact our team to learn how we can empower your business with best-in-class on-prem analytics at scale.