The AI Your Staff Is Already Using,
Minus the Part That Keeps You Up at Night.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth about most regulated offices: somebody on the team is already pasting things into ChatGPT. A paralegal summarizing a deposition. A billing coordinator drafting a denial appeal. An advisor cleaning up meeting notes. Not because they’re careless — because the tools are useful, and the alternative is doing it by hand at 7pm.
The problem isn’t the AI. It’s where the data goes. Every one of those prompts leaves your network, lands on someone else’s servers, and turns into a question you’d rather not answer during an audit, a bar complaint, or a breach notification.
An on-premise AI server fixes that at the root. We put a purpose-built machine in your office running open-weight models (the same class of models behind the tools your team already likes), wire it into your network so it’s as easy to use as any web app, and manage it the way we manage the rest of our clients’ IT. Your documents, your prompts, your outputs — all of it stays on hardware you own, in a room you can walk into.
And because Sidestreet has been the managed IT and communications partner for professional offices across the Upstate for over fifteen years, this isn’t a science project. It’s a service, with a phone number.
Built for Offices Where
“Just Use the Cloud” Isn’t an Answer
Healthcare, legal, and financial practices don’t get to treat AI like a consumer app. There’s HIPAA and the Business Associate Agreements you’d need from every vendor that touches PHI. There’s attorney-client privilege and the growing stack of bar guidance on what a lawyer has to know before feeding a client matter into a model. There’s SEC and FINRA recordkeeping for advisors, and PCI for anyone touching card data. Cloud AI tools can be brought into line with some of that — with the right enterprise tier, the right contract, and a lot of trust. On-premise AI makes most of those questions disappear, because the data never leaves.
Here’s what we actually do. We spec and source the hardware — a quiet, rack- or desk-mountable server with the GPU horsepower to run capable models at real speed for a whole office, sized to your headcount and workload. We install it on-site, connect it to your existing network and identity (so people sign in with the accounts they already have), and configure the models and a clean chat interface your team can use in a browser on day one. We can also set it up to search your own documents — policies, precedent, client files, procedure manuals — so answers come from your material, not the open internet.
Then we run it. Monthly managed support covers updates, model upgrades as better open models are released, monitoring, backups, and a person to call when someone has a question. It sits alongside our managed IT services for the offices we already support, and it works just as well as a standalone engagement for practices that have their own IT.
Nothing about this replaces your compliance program. It just means AI stops being the exception to it.
What We Provide
Hardware Sizing & Sourcing
We spec the server to your office — GPU, memory, storage, and noise level — and source it through our vendors. You own the hardware outright. No leasing, no proprietary box you can’t open.
Learn moreOn-Site Installation & Network Integration
Racked or desk-mounted, connected to your network, tied to your existing logins, and locked down so it’s reachable only from inside your walls (or over your VPN). We handle the install end to end.
Learn moreModels & Private Chat Interface
Capable open-weight models configured for writing, summarizing, drafting, and analysis, behind a clean browser-based chat that feels like the tools your team already knows. No accounts with outside AI vendors required.
Learn moreDocument Search on Your Own Files
Optional private retrieval over your policies, templates, precedent, and records — so the AI answers from your material and cites where it found it. Access follows the same permissions your file system already enforces.
Learn moreManaged Support & Upgrades
Monthly monitoring, patching, backups, and model upgrades as the open-model landscape improves — plus a real person on the phone. Bundled with our managed IT or on its own.
Learn moreStaff Training & Usage Policy
A short on-site training for your team, plus a plain-language AI usage policy your compliance lead can adopt as written — what the tool is for, what still needs a human, and where the guardrails are.
Learn moreCommon Questions
Straightforward answers to what we hear most from on-premise ai clients.
On-premise AI removes the biggest HIPAA problem with cloud tools: PHI leaving your control and landing with a vendor who’d need a BAA. Everything runs on a server inside your network, on hardware you own, with access controls tied to your existing accounts. It still lives under your existing HIPAA program — risk analysis, access policies, audit logging — and we build it to fit that program, not to replace it. We’re happy to walk through the setup with your compliance officer or privacy counsel before anything is installed.
Nothing entered into the system leaves your firm’s hardware, which is the core of what bar guidance on generative AI is asking lawyers to think about — where the client information goes, who can see it, and whether it’s used to train someone else’s model. On a private server the answers are: nowhere, only your people, and no. You still owe clients competent use and reasonable supervision, and our training and usage policy are built around exactly that.
For most everyday office work — drafting, summarizing, rewriting, pulling answers out of long documents — today’s open-weight models are close enough that your team won’t miss much, and they get better every few months. The frontier cloud models are still ahead on the hardest reasoning tasks. If a specific workflow needs that, we can help you set up a compliant, contract-backed enterprise account for those cases alongside the private server. The point is that the default, everyday tool is the one that never leaves the building.
There are two parts: the hardware, which you buy once and own, and the monthly managed plan. Hardware scales with how many people will use it at once and how big a model you want — a small practice and a 60-person firm need different machines. We scope it after a short conversation about headcount and workload and give you one clear quote. If you’re already on a Sidestreet managed IT plan, the support piece folds into what you have.
No. Plenty of practices have an in-house IT person or another MSP, and we work alongside them — we’re the AI layer, they keep running the rest. That said, it’s easiest when it’s all under one roof, and a lot of clients end up asking us about the rest of their IT once they’ve seen how we run this.
Once the hardware arrives, installation and configuration is typically done in a day or two on-site, with document search and training layered in over the following week or two. The longest part is usually the hardware lead time, which we’ll tell you up front when we quote it.
We’re based in Spartanburg, South Carolina, and install on-site across the Upstate, Greenville, Charlotte, and the Carolinas. For practices farther out, we ship the configured server and finish the setup remotely with your local IT — the full list of areas we serve is at the bottom of this page.
0
Contract clients who stayed 1+ year and had a negative ROI — zero, ever
400%+
E-commerce revenue growth for a Columbia-area manufacturer
150%
Social media engagement boost for a Carolinas church
15+
Years of senior-level marketing, web, and production work
Let’s Put AI
Inside Your Walls.
Tell us what your team is trying to do with AI and what your compliance program needs to see. We’ll scope a server, a plan, and a quote — no jargon, no pressure.
Start the conversation