Choosing an

Employee Performance
Management Software

- Cloud & On-Premise Options

Author

Prabakar Marimuthu

Cloud or On-Premise
While evaluating an employee performance management software, you have an option of
choosing between cloud based solution and on-premises solution. This white paper
analyses what these models really mean and how you can choose one among them based
on your needs.
Cloud is a remotely placed network of servers, which can be used for hosting software
applications & services. There are several companies providing these cloud environments
including Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, HP, etc. Software developers (ISVs) deploy their
employee performance management software in a cloud environment that can serve
multiple customers.
In the on-premises model, ISVs provide the software to host the software within the
customers data center or in an exclusive server dedicated for the customer.

Comparison between Cloud and On-Premise Solution

Synergita supports both cloud & on-premises hosting for customers. The cloud version is
deployed in Amazon cloud environment (AWS). Here is a quick comparison of both models.

Cloud
Infrastructure Required

On-Premises

Only browser is needed for a

Customer has to provide the

customer to start using

servers & software licenses.

Synergita

Typically servers would include

2 servers (one as application
server and other as database
server). If no. of the employees
are high, you may need more
servers to distribute the load.

Implementation Time

www. synergita.com

Implementation time is only

Customer has to purchase the

around 2 weeks with the cloud

required servers and software

hosting model. It will be more

and setup the data center. And

around implementing the soft-

then Synergita team will start

ware and configuring the

deploying the product and do

process to suit customer needs.

the implementation.

Page 02

Cloud
Maintenance

On-Premises

Synergita maintains the servers

Customer has to maintain the

as per industry standards. No

data center, servers, software

effort is required from customer.

upgrades, etc. and also ensure

Synergita has the responsibility

physical security. Responsibility

of meeting the SLA promised to

will be customers.

the customers, especially availability, backup, security, etc.

Accessibility

Software Updates

Software is accessible from

Requires firewall changes to

everywhere; only internet

provide access from outside

access is required. It is easy to

office premises. To be done by

serve mobile customers.

customers IT team.

Synergita releases new features

Synergita engineering team will

& updates every month in the

have to release the latest

cloud environment. So custom-

version to each customer sepa-

ers enjoy using the very latest

rately accessing the server

version always.

through remote or visiting the

site. So generally access to the
latest version is delayed.

Security

Synergita has put in place

Cost & effort needed from

industry standard security

customer to ensure hardware &

measures to ensure security of

data security

customer data and systems

(more details are discussed in
the forthcoming sections)
SSL Certificate

When a customer accesses

If the customer wants to imple-

Synergita from cloud server, the

ment SSL, they have to

data transfer over internet uses

purchase SSL certificate & its

SSL protocol, which is secure

additional annual recurring cost.

and tamper-proof at no additional cost from the customer.

Pricing

Pay only for what you use.

High initial investments setting

Pricing is based on the sub-

up the data center & pricing

scription duration & count of

irrespective of usage of the

employees. For example, if the

system. While Synergita is

average count of employees is

available in on-premise model,

680 for the given quarter, you

customer will have to buy it in

pay for only 680 employees

terms of no. of users (eg. 100,

250, 500, etc.)

www. synergita.com

Page 03

Cloud
Scalability

On-Premises

As the Organization grows, the

Customers have to constantly

employee count increases.

invest further & increase the

Synergita team takes care of

capacity of servers as the

scaling up the servers according

Organization grows.

to the load.
Disaster Recovery

Cloud infrastructure allows easy

Need to have a separate server

backup of software and data

for this, which is additional

frequently and maintain redun-

investment.

dant copies in different locations. So in-case of a failure, the

services can be restored in few
minutes.
Dependency on IT team

No dependency on IT team for

Lot of dependency on IT team

any operations

towards infrastructure provisioning, upkeeping the infrastructure, etc.

Cost of ownership

Pay per employee per month

Typically, cost of the software

will be on the perpetual model
followed with Annual Maintenance Contract + Cost of
hardware and OS/DB licenses.

Cloud Security
Synergita is hosted in Amazon cloud environment. Amazon cloud has obtained the following
accreditations.
ISO 27001 certified
Validated as a level 1 service provider under the Payment Card Industry (PCI)
Data Security Standard (DSS)
Annual SOC1 & SOC2 audits are successfully conducted and all the compliances
are reviewed

Each certification means that an auditor has verified that specific security controls are in
place and operating as intended. So it makes sense to evaluate the cloud providers based
on these credentials.
Synergita has also implemented the following security measures to ensure security of
customer data.

www. synergita.com

Page 04

Access to Servers
Access to Synergita servers is restricted and stringent firewall rules have been configured to
keep the servers out of reach for intruders and malicious attackers.
The level of access to different users who need to login to the server for maintenance purposes have been clearly defined and implemented. So with respect to access management
the same level of security available in the on-premises server has been implemented in
cloud as well.

Data Security
Synergita ensures security of customer data in cloud environment by implementing industry
best practices. Product is security tested in compliance with OWASP standards & recommended approaches and tools.
Data-in-transit is protected by the implementation of SSL
protocol to encrypt & transfer data between server and browser.
Synergita uses Thawte SSL.
All sensitive data are encrypted using AES methodology, the advanced algorithm and
stored in the database
Login credentials are encrypted & stored in the database. Tenants shall also avail LDAP
based authentication without storing the credentials in cloud.
Synergita architecture allows enabling encryption for all important fields as per the
requirements of tenants.

Who owns the data in cloud setup?

Synergita is committed to protect customers data and the privacy of information. The customer always owns the data and the data is accessible only to the customer. If the customer
decides to terminate the contract, data can be exported as excel dump.

Multi-Tenant Data Security / Isolation

Synergita product architecture ensures tenant data isolation in all the layers (View, Services, and Data). This architecture and our development practices automatically ensure
that the tenant data do not mix-up between multiple tenant / tenant hierarchy.
Data layer conducts additional validations to ensure the data retrieved belongs to the
tenant of logged-in user.
Product is security tested in compliance with OWASP standards & recommended
approaches and tools

Data Backup
Synergita backs up the customer data using Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS). EBS
ensures that the data is safely backed up and protected from component failure, ensuring
high availability and durability. Amazon offers an SLA of 99.99% durability & 99.99% availability of data over a given year.

www. synergita.com

Page 05

Access Restrictions
Synergita provides access control of the system. For example, the HR can configure
whether the system is accessible within the office premises alone or can be accessed from
open internet as well.

High Availability & Disaster Recovery

Availability is the ability of software applications to be available for access all the times.
Amazon offers 99% of availability over a year so customers are assured uninterrupted
services, even if there is any problem due to hardware or network failures.

Performance
Our technical team is committed to provide excellent performance of the software for all the
customers. The product is performance tested for every release and all the servers are
constantly monitored by the support team for load & ensure superior performance to all
customers by scaling up the servers as needed.

Cost Comparison
For on-premises products, customers have to purchase perpetual licenses and this pricing
model typically comes with a contract for one or more years and pay for AMC as well on
annual basis. In addition, customers have to invest on purchasing servers, licenses & bear
the recurring maintenance cost.
In the cloud hosting model, customers can pay as per usage without any long term
commitment and all you need is a browser to access application.

Cloud Hosting
Pay as per usage

On-Premises Hosting
Perpetual license cost + AMC + Server cost +
Software license cost + Data center maintenance

When do you consider On-Premise Model?

While there are significant pros from the ownership/responsibility, cost perspective on the
cloud-model, following are some of the parameters that organizations consider while
choosing the on-premise model:

Organization Culture
There are certain organizations which do not like to go for recurring payment. Typically,
these companies would like to do affront investment on the hardware, software and be done
it with one-time payment. They would be cash-rich and at the same time, vary of fluctuations in the variable spending. These organizations would go in for on-premise model.

www. synergita.com

Page 06

Fear of Data Security

Certain organizations attach lot of importance on the data security and would like to keep
their HR data inside their organization. This is to ensure that they have complete hold on
the data. Typically, these organizations will have excellent IT infrastructure in-house and will
be able to bring in security practices on the applications hosted on-premise.

Compliance Needs
There are certain compliance needs force them to go for on-premise / private cloud setup
where employee data cannot be on shared servers.

Common Characteristics between Cloud and On-Premise version of Synergita

Customization
Synergita provides very good customization options and each customer can customize the
product to fit their own needs. Right from Organization structure to appraisal workflow, the
HR can configure as per Organization requirements. The login screen can be changed as
needed. So the employees will get a feel of using an intranet system provided by their
Organization.

Integration with On-Premises Applications

A typical scenario is that customers already have some software applications, which are
hosted on-premises. And now they are looking for performance management software. To
avoid entering the redundant data into multiple systems, they want the systems to
collaborate among each other.
Synergita provides integration layer with web services exposed to enable integration with
other systems even if the systems are hosted in the customer premises. Synergita also
supports integration with LDAP & Single Sign-On Servers.

Support
Synergita offers excellent product support through different channels (support portal, email
& phone) to all its customers. In the cloud hosted model, support team is generally able to
fix the problem much quicker since fixing the issue in one server resolves the problem for all
customers.
But in case of on-premises deployments, support teams visit onsite or access the servers
over internet and fix the problems and the resolution time frame is slightly higher.

Cloud - The way forward

Cloud computing has gained momentum once large companies like Amazon, SalesForce,
etc. started promoting cloud computing. As per statistics, these companies have around
500,000 servers to meet the current demand. Also, acceptance of cloud as a standard delivery model is increasing across the world. On-premises applications are rapidly being
replaced by cloud based web solutions and accessed through browsers.

Conclusion
It is important that the customer should evaluate their needs against the pros and cons of
both models and choose. There are significant advantages by going with cloud model. It
does require some education and trust between the customer and the provider.

www. synergita.com

Page 07