Glossary · entry 01 / 12
On-premises software
On-premises software runs on computers the owner controls, in their own building, instead of on a company's cloud servers. For your tribe, it means your records live on your own hardware and never leave.
The word comes from "premises," the building itself. The software, the database, and the records all sit on machines your staff can point to, and the people who administer them answer to your government.
The practical differences follow from that one fact: the system works with the internet unplugged, access is decided by your own IT, and the records are yours to copy, move, or export at any time.
Cloud software inverts each of those: the records sit on a vendor's servers, reaching them requires a connection, and moving away means asking the vendor for your own data.