On-Premise Installation Features

An on-premise installation of the platform is typically used by large organizations to manage costs and to take advantage of additional features.

The fundamental benefits of an on-premise installation include:

• Fixed cost

  Although the initial cost is much higher, it costs nothing extra to add additional users, which can be a benefit for a very large organization.

  Firewall protection

  Since the platform is running behind the corporate firewall, providing an additional layer of security and data privacy.

  Deterministic upgrades

  The version of the platform that is running in the cloud is upgraded once or twice a month. Those upgrades provide fixes and new features, but the may also introduce new issues, and may include interface changes. For an organization that requires maximum stability, an on-premise installation provides consistent behavior that is upgraded only when the organization deems it to be prudent.

Additional features available in the installable version include:

• Custom Java Libraries - The libraries the organization uses can be integrated directly into the platform.
• Introspection and Reflection - The standard Java libraries that provide these advanced features are simply too dangerous for inclusion in the public cloud. Leaving them out provides an extra layer of protection for cloud users but at the same time, it introduces some limitations for Java programmers. For example, to build a general-purpose data display tool, it is necessary to ask "What kind of object is this?", and then use the appropriate display mechanism for say, a HashMap or an ArrayList. But the libraries that let you ask those questions are not available in the public cloud. (They're only needed for the most sophisticated of applications, but when they're really needed, they're indispensable.)