If you have decided you no longer wish to maintain and support your in-house ERP system, you are not alone, for an ever-increasing number of businesses are planning to make a switch to Cloud ERP to focus more on their business, and less on managing the IT infrastructure.
It’s a growing trend, and the statistics confirm it. The fact that more and more businesses are considering Cloud can be understood by this stat from a survey conducted by Adynamics that by 2021, spending on cloud services and cloud-enabling IT will more than double to over $530 bn.
Moreover, a survey conducted by the IT digital magazine Computer Weekly revealed that 53% of IT decision-makers participating in the survey said Cloud ERP was an investment priority for them. No wonder the future belongs to the Cloud.
But why this sudden rush for Cloud?
Well, it is not for nothing that the businesses are preferring Cloud ERP solutions and Cloud-enabled services moving forward. To begin with, it delivers a massive cost benefit. The results of a survey conducted by Finance Online suggest on-premise solutions are generally more expensive by about 30% than cloud technology.
Apart from the obvious benefits such as control over costs, and real-time access to data, a Cloud ERP software helps businesses improve the customer experience, increase productivity, improve business processes, and introduce new business models. A HubSpot study confirms it, claiming Cloud ERP implementation leads to business process improvement for 95% of businesses.
Since this blog is aimed at the process manufacturing businesses, it is pertinent to highlight how it helps the process manufacturers in particular. An ERP on Cloud for process manufacturers connects the entire supply chain, collects information at key points in production, and gives detailed insight to the manufacturers so as to facilitate more-informed decision making.
The red flag
The growing popularity of Cloud services has meant that the software vendors are jumping on the bandwagon these days, claiming they have “cloud” applications. But the buyers need to take cognizance that not all hosted software offerings marketed as “cloud” are true cloud solutions.
Identifying this increasing demand for Cloud ERP system as a lucrative opportunity to create an additional revenue stream, many on-premise vendors are resorting to “cloud-washing” their applications to offer a fake cloud solution, with the look and feel of the true cloud.
And there lies the red flag.
So, being a user, how can you differentiate a true cloud solution from a fake one? This blog tells you what fake cloud means, how is it different from the true cloud, and what consequences a fake cloud can have to your business? Continue reading.
If you take a closer look, many applications that claim to be ‘true cloud’ are simply cloud-hosted on-premise software camouflaged as cloud. Deployed on dedicated servers and managed by a service provider, they are designed for on-premise environments and architected using legacy approaches.
Such software usually come with a host of technical limitations. To begin with, they aren’t truly scalable. Moreover, since they don’t offer open APIs, upgrade and patch cycles become complex, time consuming, and require downtime to execute. Furthermore, they incur operational cost burden and significantly limit the ability of IT department to implement value-add applications.
The vendors selling these fake cloud solutions sell their on-premise applications as a hosted solution. So, while they might be purporting to offer ‘true cloud’, at its core, the software they’re claiming is ‘cloud’ is still an on-premise solution with no scalability, and higher associated hardware costs.
The difference between the two
There are certain inalienable characteristics of a ‘true’ cloud solution, which is built in the cloud, and only in the cloud. Broadly, it is multi-tenant, and it is the software multi-tenancy that predominantly separates fake cloud solutions from true cloud solutions.
In the multi-tenant software environment offered by the true cloud solution, businesses enjoy benefits such as flexibility and scalability. It allows multiple companies to run the same instance of the software, share all the common services, get personalized processes and data security, and enjoy greater economies of scale and incredible cost savings, that a fake cloud cannot.
The true cloud applications can scale up on-demand when the demand is up, and also scale down again automatically off-peak. Also, from the cost perspective, with a cloud-native platform there’s no need to continually pay for version changes, patches and new features. The customers are always on the most current version and have instant access to the latest upgrades.
Why should you care?
The long and short of it is that fake cloud solutions are more expensive, inefficient, and not as scalable. Subscribing for such software can have other severe repercussions on your business. Let’s have a quick look at them below:
Costly & unstable customizations:
Significant downtime and inadequate security as well as support:
Costly implementations:
Don’t be fooled!
When looking for a cloud based ERP software for your business, ask the right questions, get your research right, and never get deceived and fall for a fake cloud software. Choose the true cloud software application, and you won’t have to:
- Endure painful upgrades
- Settle for unreliable, unscalable, and unsecure system
- Suffer on the integration front, as a true cloud ERP can be easily integrated with both cloud and on-premise solutions
- Depend on expensive consultants every time you want to make a change to your application
- Lose your money, as a true cloud ERP software giving you more value for money
BatchMaster ERP on Cloud- Stays true to your business
Going with a natively built Cloud ERP solution such as BatchMaster ERP on Cloud is in the best interest of your business. It assures your business full redundancy and foolproof protection in case of a disastrous failure.
Its infrastructure is designed to be secure, offering 3-tier dependable data back-up, and disaster recovery. Besides providing SSL encryption and firewall technology, it offers a lot more to assure the integrity and confidentiality of valuable business data.
BatchMaster ERP on Cloud also ensures automatic and frequent software upgrades that do not result in any downtime or interruption of operations, with its uptime always meeting the assured level of 99.9%!
Drop an email to talk to the experts and know more about the product, or to schedule a free demo.
