The buried parts are. Perforated pipe, gravel, and a sealed cove joint have no moving parts and last decades. The pump is the wear item, with a three to seven year service life, so the system stays permanent only if the pump gets replaced on schedule.
More detail
The honest framing is that an interior system is permanent infrastructure with one consumable component, and most disappointment traces to nobody explaining which part is which. What does not wear out. The perforated drain pipe laid in gravel below the slab, the gravel bed itself, the connection to the sump basin, and the restored concrete. These are inert and buried, and there is no mechanism by which they degrade under normal conditions. Properly installed, they outlast most of the rest of the house. What does wear out. The pump. A sump pump is a small submersible motor running duty cycles for years, and three to seven years is the realistic range depending on how hard it works. A pump that has been short-cycling because of a failed check valve wears faster. Replacing one is a few hundred dollars and it is the single maintenance item the system has. The honest limitation. An interior system manages water rather than excluding it. Water still reaches the footing; the system intercepts it and sends it somewhere useful instead of letting it rise through the cove joint. That is a real distinction and it is why the pump matters: the system is only doing its job while it can move water. What makes it genuinely durable in practice. A battery backup, because the failure mode that floods a basement is a storm taking the power out exactly when the water table peaks. A discharge line routed far enough away and terminated so it will not ice closed. And an annual test, which takes two minutes: pour a bucket into the basin and confirm the pump starts, runs, and stops. Do that and the answer is yes, permanent. Greater Cincinnati sits on glacial till over Ordovician limestone and shale, with clay-rich soils that hold water and hillside slopes that concentrate it. Water is not going to stop arriving in this market, and a system that keeps moving it is the whole solution.