Enterprise evaluation guide
On-premises vs cloud wallet deployment
Hosting location is only one part of the decision. Compare the operating responsibilities and evidence required for each option before choosing an environment.
Write down your constraints first
Identify where data may be processed, who may access production and which systems must connect to the wallet. Distinguish mandatory requirements from preferences. Ask whether restrictions cover backups, logs and support access as well as the primary database.
- Required hosting region and network boundaries
- Identity, secret management and privileged access requirements
- Provider connectivity and deployment approval process
Compare responsibility, not just location
For each hosting option, name the party accountable for infrastructure, patching, releases, monitoring and incident response. An on-premises deployment can include vendor support; a cloud deployment can still leave substantial work with your team.
- Who approves and performs application and database upgrades?
- Who receives alerts and can act outside office hours?
- Who pays for and operates backups, logs and recovery environments?
Turn recovery targets into an acceptance exercise
Agree acceptable data loss and recovery time with the business. Ask the delivery team to propose a recovery exercise and record its result. A backup policy alone does not demonstrate that a deployment can recover within the required window.
- Restore a representative backup in an isolated environment
- Check ledger and provider reconciliation after recovery
- Record access, dependencies and manual steps in the runbook
Compare costs across the same period
Include implementation, infrastructure, support, internal staffing, upgrades and an exit plan. State expected workloads and environments alongside each estimate. Compare proposals over the same period rather than comparing a monthly hosting fee with a one-time implementation quote.
- Use the same workload and availability assumptions
- Include staging, recovery and observability costs
- Record which estimates change with volume or scope