Choosing a tax engine deployment
When choosing how to deploy a tax engine - whether on-premise, in the cloud, or on the edge - consider the most important factors to your unique business, such as tolerance for latency, data throughput, and transaction volume.
Inhibitions around latency often prevent companies from choosing a cloud solution, but an on-premise solution may dedicate too many resources to an application that business and IT leaders do not consider top priority.
3 Options for deploying a tax engine
1. On-premise
On-premise software is deployed on dedicated servers that a business owns and maintains. Dedicated IT personnel and resources manage the hardware and software in a business-specific data center. Internal business teams manually manage new content updates and software enhancements. This can be costly and require specialized expertise to test, maintain, and secure.
Benefits
- Maintain control over hardware
- Continue using an existing IT environment
- Low latency
Who is it best for?
On-premise options are best for companies that already have a robust data center and plan to maintain it over a long horizon into the future. They are also best for businesses needing low latency in operations and for those that have contractual obligations with customers regarding data security and control.
2. Cloud
Cloud-based software runs in a private, shared, or public cloud and is maintained by the technology provider who also owns and maintains the necessary hardware. The technology provider is responsible for ensuring that the solution it hosts, functions well and that it's secure, regularly backed up, and has power redundancy. A business sends its data to the server's location for it to be used in the cloud-based application.
Benefits
- Spend less on hardware and IT management
- Gain efficiency with automatic software and tax content updates
- Adapt more quickly to expanding business demands with solutions that scale easily
Who is it best for?
Cloud-based solutions are best for companies that aren't able or willing to maintain their own data centers, including those that want to save costs or that lack access to the expertise to manage hardware and software. The cloud offers more efficiency and out-of-the-box operability.
3. Edge computing
A third option is edge computing, also called edge-to-cloud, which is a way of combining the benefits of on-premise and cloud-based solutions. Edge computing brings in situ data facilities close to your close location; these facilities are owned and managed by a separate provider. This combines the security and latency advantage of on-premise systems with the functionality and convenience of cloud-based solutions.
Benefits
- Maximize performance and speed with a solution deployed within an existing business infrastructure
- Gain efficiency with automatic software and tax content updates
- Maintain tax policy, configurations, and data for reporting and analytics - while having the confidence that the tax engine can reliably calculate tax even without an internet connection? all from a single source of truth across all business systems
Who is it best for?
Edge computing solutions are best for businesses that want or need to keep tax calculation as close as possible to where the data is being used, but that want or need the freedom and flexibility of a cloud-based solution. Edge solutions are a match for businesses seeking precision, accuracy, low latency, control, and ease of implementation and management.
Is edge computing the right deployment option for you?
If you answer yes to two or more of the following questions, edge computing may be the right deployment option for your business's tax engine.
- Do we need a solution that gives us a high level of accuracy while allowing us to maintain control of our data?
- Should our solution automatically stay current with tax policy changes, anywhere we do business globally?
- Do we need to increase our tax determination speed and reduce latency?
- Does our solution need to be deployed within an existing business infrastructure to minimize risks associated with a network outage?
- Do we need a solution that can be deployed across existing business systems, allowing tax to be managed from a single source?
- Do we need investment protection as new technologies are adopted?
- Do we have contractual obligations with customers regarding data security and control?
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