I have a license of FME desktop and currently use it to extract features from autocad DWG files from three physical servers and package it into SHP files. Running this manually is a bit tedious, and I would like to run updates more often so I am considering getting into either FME Server or FME Cloud. From a cost perspective, the Cloud option looks more appealing, but I don't know if it will be able to access all of our network drives. I am not that knowledgeable about IT issues, but wonder if I will need to give the cloud server some kind of VPN to be able to get at the data. This will likely make our IT consultants worry about security issues. Any advice on how to proceed would be greatly appreciated.
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Have you considered running the workspaces using Windows Scheduled Tasks rather than manually?
FME Cloud cannot read your network drives, unless they're specifically made public to the Cloud instance, e.g. using whitelisted IP or something similar. You are not able to install or configure a VPN on the Cloud instance, unless you somehow can convince Safe to do it for you. An alternative would be to host a copy of your network files on e.g. AWS S3, and access them there from the Cloud instance, using ordinary AWS security mechanisms.
If you have security concerns, an internal FME Server instance will in most cases be the option that is the easiest to justify.
Have you considered running the workspaces using Windows Scheduled Tasks rather than manually?
Thanks for the suggestion. I never heard of Windows Scheduled Tasks before and just looked it up. I will work with our IT consultants to explore this further. Given the reply from @david_r , FME Cloud is going to be more work than I was hoping for as well. The tedious manual process I am doing now doesn't seem so tedious after all.