ERP On Cloud Is Fast Moving To The Mainstream

- Karan Kirpalani

The movement of cloud ERP to the mainstream seems to be global. Analysts expect the global cloud ERP market to grow rapidly, with market size projections varying between USD 25 bn to USD 30 bn over the next four or five years.

While the concept has been around for some time, organizational mindsets towards cloud based ERP have changed dramatically of late, and in the last 18-24 months we have seen widespread adoption of ERP on the cloud – whether it’s Microsoft Dynamics / Navision, or SAP HANA / ECC on HANA. A number of factors are responsible for this shift.

MUCH OF THE APPLICATION ECOSYSTEM IS ALREADY ON THE CLOUD 

Cloud-based applications are steadily replacing on-premise legacy systems across the entire spectrum of business processes – customer-facing web applications, CRM, HRM, documentation, reporting and analytics, project management, are applications that are steadily being migrated from on-premise environments to the Cloud.

In fact, organizations that may have already moved these ‘less mission-critical’ web-centric applications into the cloud, it makes great sense to have their ERP follow suit to ensure minimum latency between applications, improve analytics and reporting, leverage common security protocols and drive greater cost and performance efficiencies.

And while it still makes sense for some applications to stay on-premise (for cost, compliance, or legacy reasons) it’s equally sensible to move web-enabled applications to the cloud. Working with a CSP that provides a seamless, extensible Hybrid Cloud allows customers the best of both worlds.

UNDERSTANDING THAT PROCESS STANDARDIZATION ENABLES EVOLUTION