Some insist on full privatization—bills become datacenter and ops. Others insist on commercial APIs only—contracts and recipes enter prompts. Both ends are expensive, differently. The right cut is a scenario matrix: data too sensitive to leave the domain uses local open models; strongest reasoning with maskable input uses commercial API; field low-latency uses local first. Combine—do not pick a camp.
Tag scenarios with sensitivity and latency first. Tags decide routing; vendors are execution layer.
One Routing Table Is Enough to Start
Internal policies, customer lists, cost, recipes: local, default no egress. Marketing copy, public summaries: commercial API after masking. Line assistant, QC hints: local small model, latency in seconds. Complex analysis, code assist: API OK with attachments stripped. Route at the gateway—apps must not each connect their own.
- Egress requires masking and approval with audit trail.
- Local models need version and rollback—"who ran it on a laptop" must not be production dependency.
- Optimize by scenario cost and error rate—not "we only use one vendor."
Latency Is a Hard Floor Constraint
A shop-floor assistant waiting two seconds for cloud round-trip gets closed. Those scenarios stay local even if slightly weaker. The XYN digital intelligence system routes assistant requests by scenario to local or API with consistent permissions and masking. Clear combination tells procurement whether to buy GPUs or tokens—and security which links to audit hardest.
Tag scenarios before buying models. Buy models first and you nurture idle GPUs and oversized API bills together.
