Company research

Two patterns fit inside one account in a region you name: call a managed foundation-model API such as Amazon Bedrock, Microsoft Foundry / Azure OpenAI, or Vertex AI; or deploy an open-weight model on GPU compute you control. Your application, retrieval layer, storage, identity and logs remain in your cloud boundary in both patterns.

The managed-API pattern can use closed-source frontier models without buying or operating GPUs. It is usually the fastest way to build a custom workflow, but prompts and retrieved context are processed by the managed service, so model availability, retention, abuse monitoring and regional routing must be checked for the exact feature and endpoint.

The private-model pattern gives more control over weights, serving and network paths, and can use managed endpoints or your own containers. It also makes your team responsible for capacity, patches, model upgrades, evaluation and failover.

The cloud provider becomes a data processor in either pattern: you need a DPA, a documented region, and an answer on cross-region routing and where support staff can access the environment from.

Documents, queries and embeddings stay on machines you own, using an open-weight model whose licence you review. For a brief that involves personal data, that removes a model-API vendor from the data path rather than governing that transfer by contract.

It costs you the operational work instead: a GPU server, Docker, Linux, backups and a patching routine. Your stated technical capability is "unknown", which is the attribute this option most depends on.

No processor agreement, subprocessor list or cross-border transfer assessment is needed for the model itself, because no third party processes the content.