The Pros and Cons of Hyperscaler Alternatives

Despite growing concerns about costs and lock-in, the three major public cloud providers (AWS, Azure, and GCP) are often still considered the “go-to” options for infrastructure services. As established players, hyperscalers have some advantages which are difficult to replicate by alternative providers, including an extensive partner ecosystem and talented engineers specialized in developing new features and delivering services.

It is easy for start-ups and scale-ups to opt for hyperscalers, especially when they have credits that mitigate some of the cost concerns in the near term. 

Once these credits are used up, however, organizations who bought into the hyperscaler ecosystem are forced to look critically at their cost patterns and determine what’s sustainable and optimal. Some organizations have decided to move away entirely from hyperscalers to run their workloads on premises, such as Ahrefs and Basecamp/Hey. But moving completely away from cloud-based solutions is not a very common scenario.

For those who want to keep targeted workloads in the cloud, the market for cloud alternatives should be considered. Here’s a quick look at the types of cloud alternatives available, their advantages and disadvantages. 

Colocation Providers

Colocation providers, e.g. Digital Realty and Summit, are usually real estate investment trust companies that operate the facilities where data centers are hosted. Colocation vendors only provide space, power, cooling, and occasionally cross-connects and internet connectivity.

• Colocation pros include high levels of control and lower costs than hyperscalers, as there are no value-add software-defined services.
• Colocation cons include high upfront CAPEX, longer provisioning times compared to as-a-service infrastructure offerings, and the need for dedicated infrastructure staff to procure, deploy, and manage the hardware in the data center.

Colocation is generally a good option when organizations have the in-house skills to manage the infrastructure, have CAPEX or hardware available, and don't have requirements to deliver services across geographies.

Lower-Cost Cloud Providers 

These cloud providers, e.g. Digital Ocean and Vultr,  offer a comparable developer experience to the hyperscaler, offering a centralized management platform to configure software-defined compute, storage, and networking.

• Lower cost cloud provider pros include reduced costs compared to hyperscalers while maintaining similar functionality and APIs. They often provide better price-performance ratios and more predictable pricing models without complex tier structures.
• Lower cost cloud provider cons include a less mature and comprehensive set of native services, a smaller pool of certified engineers and partner ecosystem.

Low-cost cloud providers are generally a good option when an organization wants a programmatic infrastructure service without a large catalog of options. 

Infrastructure-as-a-Service

From the options described above, organizations either have to take on the significant responsibility for managing both hardware and software, or opt for a watered down version of a hyperscaler. Another option is Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS). IaaS offers on-demand access and management of computing resources such as servers, storage, networking, and virtualization across a variety of infrastructure.

NetActuate’s Open Network Edge (ONE) is a globally distributed infrastructure-as-a-service (Iaas) providing users choice and control over their infrastructure and network. It offers out-of-the-box implementations of widely deployed open source software, including operating system, network operating systems, monitoring software, orchestration tools, and everything else needed to scale applications globally. 

NetActuate’s team of experts help customers architect solutions for their unique requirements with the flexibility to mix and match Cloud, VM, Colocation, and Bare Metal environments with hyperscaler-like automation. Customers onboard and access NetActuate’s the global Anycast network in over 40 locations, reaching major metropolitan areas in under 30 milliseconds.

Providing an ideal blend of deployment flexibility, global reach, low latency, and cost-effectiveness, ONE is a hyperscaler alternative that reduces costs without increasing the burden of infrastructure management.

Get the Scorecard

We invite you to evaluate the Open Network Edge against Hyperscalers and Colocation options using the scorecards in the eBook: Exit Hyperscalers. Keep the Cloud. Here, you can map your organization’s needs against the capabilities from all three options.