Server
In short
A server is a machine that provides services to other devices: files, email, a database, a website. The word says nothing about the form factor — a server can be a box in a rack, a machine at a hosting provider, or a rented instance in the cloud. What defines it is the role, not the metal.
Own hardware or rented
An honest comparison contains more than the purchase price: power, cooling, spare parts, backups, updates, and the person who drives out when it stops. Compare acquisition cost alone and you will nearly always reach the wrong conclusion.
Owned hardware still earns its place where latency or data volume force it — production control belongs next to the machine, not at the far end of a line. For file storage and email, most Swiss SMEs have settled the question the other way.
The mistake we see most
Thinking a server in your own basement is safer because you can touch it. Physical proximity is not a security control. What counts is patching, restricted access, and a backup that has demonstrably been restored.
Measured against those three, a well-run datacentre usually beats a box nobody has looked at since installation. The inverse mistake exists too, mind: «in the cloud» does not mean somebody else is checking your backups.
What it means legally
Where it runs changes nothing about responsibility. Anyone processing personal data owes appropriate technical and organisational measures (Art. 8 FADP, SR 235.1); delegating to a provider is permitted but does not discharge the duty (Art. 9 FADP).
So the contract with your provider is part of your documentation, not a substitute for it. If you cannot say where your data sits and who can reach it, you have not met the obligation — however good the provider happens to be.
How we handle it
We decide per service rather than wholesale, and cost it over several years instead of over the invoice. Operation and monitoring: Managed IT; replacing existing kit: backup and cloud.
The sentence heard most often once it is too late: «but it has run fine for years».
Related terms
A term in your quote that nobody explained?
In a strategy call we translate the offer in front of you — even when it did not come from us.