Your credential database, door schedules, and event history live in the manufacturer’s secure data center rather than on a server in your building. You administer everything from a browser or a phone app — add a badge from your car, lock down a building from home, pull an audit trail from a job site.

For a lot of Arizona businesses, this is now the default answer. Not because cloud is inherently better, but because most companies don’t want to own and maintain a server just to unlock doors.

Your data lives somewhere else. For most businesses this is fine, and arguably safer than a server in an unlocked closet — but government contractors, certain healthcare/financial environments, and anyone with data-residency requirements should know which they are before shopping.

Subscription costs continue indefinitely. Over a long enough horizon, a large system can cost more on cloud than on-premise. Where that crossover falls depends on door count and platform — we’ll run real numbers for your building.

You depend on the platform’s roadmap. Features arrive on the manufacturer’s schedule, and a sunsetted product line puts you on their migration path.

Internet matters for administration, not enforcement. Credentials and schedules are cached at the controller. If your internet drops, doors keep working exactly as programmed — what you lose is the ability to make changes or see live events until it’s back.