Cloud ERP

| 3 Comments | 180systems

January 28, 2015 from InformationWeek – “Enterprise resource planning software is the ultimate legacy application. On the downside, ERP has earned a reputation for costly, time-consuming deployments and maintenance, outdated user interfaces, and general inflexibility.”

Read more

180 View – The cloud is supposed to make ERP implementations a lot easier according to pundits and vendors alike. However the cloud is really just a different way of deploying the software and most of the tasks and risks in an implementation don’t vanish into the clouds.

3 thoughts on “Cloud ERP”

  1. That’s true, but it reduces the number of technical issues that you have to deal with initially, especially on the infrastructure side. For example you don’t have to worry about things like complicated server installations, upgrades, backups etc. You can focus more on the implementation itself. However, there are some downsides as well since sometimes you are giving up control in exchange for convenience. So, there may be trade offs. Some systems will let you start in the cloud, and then migrate in-house which is another possibility. It depends on the situation, and its hard to generalize.

  2. The term “Cloud” does simply mean a different deployment method. Running a server based application over a hosted model is cloud. So it is true that deploying traditional software over the cloud does not reduce tasks and risks.

    However Software-as-a-Service is also cloud. True SaaS applications have greatly reduced tasks and risks as the vendor truly does take care of the majority of the technology issues.

  3. Good points Paul. Also in a true SaaS environment the costs and risks of upgrades are also mitigated. This article did reference implementation costs (perhaps meaning initial implementation) but most software purchasers include upgrades in their total cost of ownership and consider it part of the ongoing implementation costs so I thought it was worth mentioning. The multi tenant nature of true Saas application ensure upgrades have minimal impact on the customer and in most cases they are completely transparent to the customer and have little or no cost.

Comments are closed.