Portnox CLEAR vs. On-Premise NAC: A Look at Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)

On-Premise NAC vs. SaaS NAC

Set-Up & Configuration

Unlike traditional on-premise NAC solutions that require hardware appliances, software, and other on-premise elements, you can create your dedicated instance of Portnox CLEAR cloud-delivered NAC-as-a-Service in minutes.

Portnox CLEAR has been built from the ground up to simplify policy configuration, allowing for deployment timelines that can be measured in hours. In contrast, traditional on-premise NAC deployments can be measured in weeks or months.

Set-Up Costs Eliminated with Portnox CLEAR: Need for on-site appliances, need for third-party expertise, man-hours dedicated to systems training

Savings Value: HIGH

Scalability & Performance

As a cloud service, Portnox CLEAR eliminates the need for the capacity planning of on-premise NAC software or appliances. It also eliminates the need to expand capacity or upgrade appliances to meet future growth needs as required by traditional on-premise NAC.

Portnox CLEAR can automatically control the virtual machine size and the scale up or down rules. Dedicated F5 load balancers are spun up as well as auto-scale, so you never have to be concerned with service performance or scalability – it will automatically expand as needed to meet demand.

Performance Costs Eliminated with Portnox CLEAR: Man-hours dedicated to capacity planning, need for on-site appliance upgrades, need for local load balancing

Savings Value: MODERATE

Lifecycle Maintenance

Another hidden cost of on-premise is maintenance. All you have to do is search the web – in most cases you’ll find that vendors have lengthy manuals that outline the painful steps and procedures necessary to keep the software or its associated appliances updated.

These upgrades often come with time limits that can force you to start over and re-do your work. Worse yet, one simple mistake during these upgrades can take your network down for many hours or days. And guess what? You often get to go through these upgrades multiple times per year.

With Portnox CLEAR, never worry about software or hardware end-of-life, or costly, complex upgrades requiring hours and days of work and a never-ending checklist of to-dos. As a cloud-delivered service, Portnox CLEAR is always running the most up-to-date version with the latest features and capabilities. At the end of the day, Portnox CLEAR customers enjoy continuous service availability with ZERO lifecycle maintenance costs.

Maintenance Costs Eliminated with Portnox CLEAR: Software upgrades, NAC downtime, need for third-party expertise

Savings Value: HIGH