Take Control Of Your Digital Assets
Discover why cloud hosting is now a risky business.
We are often asked if ProStore® is Cloud-based. This answer to this question is a hard no, and there’s very good reasons why.
Cloud based platforms all rely on the same core multi-tenant infrastructure for vital services, and if (when) something is overloaded it affects everyone. Shopify’s infamous 2025 Cyber Monday admin panel outage is a good example. This catastrophic crash lasted several hours and ground everyone to a halt, on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. This was not triggered by one single massive client, but by a sudden, overwhelming spike in small, low-value connections taxing a shared resource. With the cloud, whenever a critical threshold gets breached, everyone on the platform automatically suffers.
Why Private Hosting Outperforms The Cloud!
Contrary to common perceptions, the cloud isn’t a single, tangible object. It’s actually just a metaphor for a network of remote servers and the services they provide. The concept of the cloud is over 25 years old now, and a lot has changed since it was first developed. Back then, private infrastructure was prohibitively expensive. Nowadays, it’s highly cost-effective and a far more attractive option for businesses.
1. Security
Uncertainties around privacy and security on the cloud are still a major concern for businesses. Cloud services will always be vulnerable to malicious attacks, and these are becoming more and more prevalent and disruptive (and ingenious). Everyone knows how cloud dependency stung a number of high profile supermarkets recently. Serious cyberattacks over several days not only affected their public cloud environments, but also their cloud-based supply chain systems. Final costs were over £1B.
2. Availability
Cloud storage is often shared by millions of other users, and their individual actions can compromise service availability. Cloud failures can (and will) happen, even to biggest of service providers, and these can leave you locked out of your core business systems for several hours, sometimes even days. Picture what would happen to your business if your systems were down for an extended period!
3. Usability
Cloud based applications are built using browser-compatible technologies, much like a website. However, delivering complex and high performance software features via a browser can require users to scroll excessively in order to view data within the limited viewport. It can feel like you're looking at your business through the letterbox. Constant scrolling is frustrating and generates an unnecessary amount of friction through the user interface.
4. Performance
ProStore® is a powerful, mission critical business solution so consistent high performance is paramount. Cloud service providers often distribute your data to multiple virtual machines across the World, and then reassemble it all again on demand. This can have a significant, undesirable impact on performance and response times.
Why Desktop Still Reigns For Heavy Lifting
Unify Studio™ is deployed as a desktop application, and this decision isn’t about preferences. It’s a deliberate choice dictated by the non-negotiable laws of physics and the fundamental needs of a busy online retail business. Desktop still has world domination when it comes to heavy lifting, and there are no web-based tools that can compete.
It’s all about performance. A cloud-based application runs on a server in a data centre, potentially hundreds or thousands of miles away. Every single action you take or key you press has to travel from your computer to that server, be processed, and then travel all the way back to you. This round-trip journey, even using fibre at the speed of light, introduces a significant and unavoidable delay. For this reason, the cloud is currently an inferior deployment model for heavy-duty applications when compared to the desktop.
We use a hybrid model for ProStore® that provides the best of all worlds. Local deployment for performance and usability, and shared private servers for data collaboration. In essence, we provide the power you need via the desktop, and use our private servers to securely share all of your data across your team.
Many other industries also choose to deploy their big-hitting power applications via the desktop rather than the cloud. Why? Because any type of professional creative work is incredibly demanding on a computer’s resources, and desktop applications have a direct, unimpeded connection to this power.
Architecture & Planning
Autodesk AutoCAD, the de-facto standard for 2D drafting and technical drawings.
✓ DESKTOP BASED
Graphic Design
Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, both industry leading applications.
✓ DESKTOP BASED
Video Production
Adobe Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Avid Media Composer, and Apple's Final Cut Pro.
✓ DESKTOP BASED
Music Production
Avid Pro Tools, Ableton Live, Apple's Logic Pro X, and FL Studio.
✓ DESKTOP BASED
Engineering & Aerospace
SOLIDWORKS, Autodesk Inventor, CATIA, and ANSYS.
✓ DESKTOP BASED
Scientific Research
MATLAB, SPSS Statistics, and GraphPad Prism.
✓ DESKTOP BASED
If you still think you need a Cloud-based system, then consider Adobe, the $240B corporation that offer a Cloud version of their legendary ‘Photoshop’ application. Even with all of the resources at their disposal, they freely admit on their corporate website that their Cloud-based version will exhibit “a noticeable delay” during certain operations, and that the functionality offered by the cloud-based version is inferior to that of the Desktop version.
We Rest Our Case!
The Top Cloud Exit Drivers
More and more companies, both large and small, are moving away from the cloud in favour of private, secure infrastructure. This phenomenon is known as “cloud exit.” We needed to know exactly why this is happening, so we conducted a significant amount of independent research and the results are now in. Here are the top 12 reasons we heard most often.
High Costs
"Our costs are unpredictable, and can escalate very quickly."
Budgeting
"Variable cloud usage charges make budgeting difficult for us."
Low Value
"Private infrastructure is more cost-effective than the cloud."
Poor Security
"The cloud raises significant concerns around security."
Non-Compliance
"Meeting our regulatory compliance can be difficult."
No Control
"There is an inherent lack of control with cloud resources."
Low Latency
"Our applications simply perform better on private infrastructure."
High Outages
"Cloud outages have caused us significant business interruption."
Low Stability
"Our cloud infrastructure is often destabilised by other users."
Lock-in
"Our cloud provider has locked us into their specific ecosystem."
Too Rigid
"There is no scope to customise our cloud infrastructure."
Restricting
"Our cloud strategy is restricting our latest business goals."