PositioningGovernment document processing: sovereign on-premise against metered cloud IDP
Cloud IDP platforms are competent software sold through hyperscaler marketplaces. For a sovereign authority the question is not capability but jurisdiction, and for an archive project it is arithmetic.
Government document processing: sovereign on-premise against metered cloud IDP| Criterion | Metered cloud IDP | In-house manual entry | DocxIntel |
|---|
| Where documents are read | Vendor cloud, often a foreign region | Inside your building | Inside your building, on your hardware |
|---|
| Works with no outbound route | Not available | Yes | Supported by default |
|---|
| Foreign cloud dependency | Yes | No | No |
|---|
| Handwritten Arabic intake | Best-effort | Reliable but slow | First-class |
|---|
| Converting 2M archived pages | Roughly $25,000 to $600,000illustrative list-rate arithmetic at $0.0125 to $0.30 per page | Years of clerical effort | No incremental licence chargeGPU time only |
|---|
| Reprocessing after a model improvement | Charged again per page | Not feasible | No incremental charge |
|---|
| Chain of custody and audit logging | Vendor portal logs | Manual registers | Your own logging estate |
|---|
| Who holds the model weights | The vendor | Not applicable | You do |
|---|
Where documents are read
- Metered cloud IDP
- Vendor cloud, often a foreign region
- In-house manual entry
- Inside your building
- DocxIntel
- Inside your building, on your hardware
Works with no outbound route
- Metered cloud IDP
- Not available
- In-house manual entry
- Yes
- DocxIntel
- Supported by default
Foreign cloud dependency
- Metered cloud IDP
- Yes
- In-house manual entry
- No
- DocxIntel
- No
Handwritten Arabic intake
- Metered cloud IDP
- Best-effort
- In-house manual entry
- Reliable but slow
- DocxIntel
- First-class
Converting 2M archived pages
- Metered cloud IDP
- Roughly $25,000 to $600,000illustrative list-rate arithmetic at $0.0125 to $0.30 per page
- In-house manual entry
- Years of clerical effort
- DocxIntel
- No incremental licence chargeGPU time only
Reprocessing after a model improvement
- Metered cloud IDP
- Charged again per page
- In-house manual entry
- Not feasible
- DocxIntel
- No incremental charge
Chain of custody and audit logging
- Metered cloud IDP
- Vendor portal logs
- In-house manual entry
- Manual registers
- DocxIntel
- Your own logging estate
Who holds the model weights
- Metered cloud IDP
- The vendor
- In-house manual entry
- Not applicable
- DocxIntel
- You do
Cost figures are our own arithmetic on publicly published list rates as of 2026, not vendor quotations, and exclude scanning and quality-assurance effort in all three columns. Verify against current vendor documentation before making a decision.