Cloud Archives - Page 8 of 15

Cloud Migrations: “Lift & Shift” vs. “Build-from-Scratch”

by EstesCloud | Feb 2, 2022 | Cloud, ERP Implementation, Hosting, Managed IT Services

EstesGroup is excited to announce that we are sponsoring Third Stage Consulting Group’s Digital Stratosphere event on February 8th – February 10th, 2022.

Digital Stratosphere Graphic Third Stage Consulting EstesGroup

“Lift & Shift” vs. “Build-from-Scratch” Cloud Strategies

Our keynote presentation at Digital Stratosphere 2022 is based on conversations with our customers who are looking for the best way to move to the cloud from on-premise infrastructure or from a different cloud environment. We hope to help businesses struggling to understand their future in cloud-based deployments of their applications and data. With our years of experience assisting complex manufacturers and distributors with IT infrastructure and cloud migrations, EstesGroup builds the best custom private and hybrid cloud hosting solutions for any business ready to take on the challenge of implementing new technology.

Moving How, Moving Where?

Are you wondering how to move your data, your history, and your business applications to a cloud computing platform? Or, are you wondering how to move from one cloud to another? Any IT infrastructural shift you take results in what is known in the industry as a cloud migration. The options in choosing a cloud computing service model are varied. You have to factor everything in, from the timbre of your cloud adoption culture to the state of your computing resources.

Infrastructure as a service (IaaS)

In an IaaS environment, the customer procures resources from a cloud provider and is responsible for provisioning and configuring servers, and responsible for the installation, configuration and maintenance of the operating system and application layers. The provider maintains the underlying data center architecture and cloud infrastructure, and the customer assumes all subsequent duties.

In an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) context, a customer purchases services from a cloud computing company, then uses these services to provision the necessary virtual machines to build out the cloud ecosystem.

Within this ecosystem, the customer would subsequently install the necessary operating systems, the database management systems and the ERP applications themselves. The customer is responsible not only for installation and configuration of their specific cloud ecosystem, but also for its ongoing maintenance and the maintenance of any third-party integrations.

As you can see, Infrastructure as a Service bears the most similarity to an on-premise data center in that it places the most responsibility for the management of the ecosystem on the customer, which would require the internal roles to administer the network, the database, and the application itself. But unlike on-premise installations, and their colocation counterparts, the resources benefit from the scalability of a cloud infrastructure, and are able to dial in their needs accordingly.

Additionally, the customer would be responsible for constructing and managing any third-party integrations with the core enterprise systems in place. With this comes the cost benefits of a consumption-based model. From a control standpoint, customers benefit from the ability to define and manage their third-party integrations in a manner that is tailored to the needs of their organization.

Platform as a service (PaaS)

In a PaaS environment, the provider provisions and manages the underlying architecture, and this platform provides the foundation upon which customer applications are installed and operated. In an ERP context, a customer working with a managed hosting provider could provision virtual machines, install and configure the operating system and database management systems, and then install and configure the ERP system on the pre-established platform.

The maintenance of the platform is the responsibility of the provider, while the ongoing maintenance of the ERP solution may be the responsibility of the customer or the provider, depending on the relationship that has been established between them. As such, within the PaaS model variants exist which allow customers to control various elements of the cloud ecosystem while outsourcing other elements to the cloud provider. Depending on the support gradient, the provider may be responsible strictly for the management of the operating system and database, allowing the customer to control the installation and administration of the application.

In most enterprise system scenarios, the cloud provider will provide additional support, managing the application’s server-side administration, allowing the client to focus on the functional administration of the application, such as user access and permissions within the ERP system itself.

Depending on the capabilities of the cloud provider and the needs of the customer, the provider may also provide these functional needs. Additional administrative effort may similarly be divided across third-party applications that are integrated with the primary system. Given the different tiers of service, providers can tailor their pricing models to meet the specific needs of the specific customer.

In terms of scalability, the cloud provider addresses resource expansion and retraction needs, should they arise. This flexibility is often defined in the agreements themselves. In terms of seasonal usage changes, for instance, the costing implications of cyclical resource changes can be managed in a manner similar to an IaaS model.

Software as a service (SaaS)

In a SaaS environment, the customer consumes the application directly from the software vendor in most cases unless the SaaS code has been sub-licensed to others. The application is deployed to a cloud environment, and the provider is entirely responsible for the management of the entire cloud ecosystem.

In an ERP context, a customer could purchase a monthly license (usually based on “seats”) to a cloud-based ERP system and interact with the system through a web-enabled client, like a browser window. The customer never experiences the underlying infrastructure, or even the underlying application server itself, but only interacts with the application on a client basis.

Enterprise systems built upon a SaaS platform tend to have limited customization capabilities when compared to their on-premise counterparts. The emphasis here is on configurability in the place of customizability, with a customer bending its processes to fit within the parameters of the system configuration. Some customers benefit from a subscription-based model that bundles the cost of the application licensure and its underlying infrastructure into a single monthly cost.

Whose operating system are you sitting on? The most public of cloud-native platforms, SaaS applications provide a public cloud service. Amazon Web Services might come to mind as an everyday example of public cloud environments. An off-premises data center processes your business interactions in a park-like setting, with communication coming and going from businesses that are operating in the same cloud environment, which is supported by a large, and often global, corporation.

Types of Cloud Service are as Varied as Cloud Service Models

The choices are divergent, as are their implications to the implementing organization. Once a service model has been chosen, the implementation strategy can have a significant impact on the project’s timeline, budget, and scope.

That is to say, migrating to the cloud is not a one-size-fits-all proposition, and most companies migrating to the cloud normally face a choice between two options. On the one hand, they can opt to lift their existing on-premise platform and shift it wholesale to a cloud instantiation. On the other, they can choose to rebuild and reconfigure the new cloud platform from the ground up. The differences between the two approaches are significant, and a company should carefully consider the implications when approaching a cloud migration.

Cloud Migrations and Digital Transformation: Rations and Reasons

Reasons for cloud migrations are also nuanced. Companies tend to focus on security and compliance, flexibility and adaptability, and pricing when planning for a move to PaaS, IaaS, or SaaS.

Digital Stratosphere is the perfect cloud-based realm to explore your business strategies. Digital Stratosphere is a free virtual event designed for organizations about to embark on any digital strategy or transformation initiatives. Cloud migrations are the ultimate transformation for companies of all sizes and in all industries, and Third Stage Consulting Group’s online events provide the space to freely explore future possibilities.

Please fill out the form below if you’d like to see what cloud migrations look like in our EstesCloud private & hybrid cloud hosting environment.

Who Knows What You’re Doing For Data Privacy Week?

by EstesCloud | Jan 27, 2022 | Backup, Cloud, Disaster Recovery, Managed IT Services, Security

The EstesGroup 2022 data privacy initiative focuses on educating businesses on best practices for collecting data and promoting transparency, respect, and security.

Every second, EstesGroup cybersecurity experts work to protect the data of our customers, our employees, our partners, and our friends. In this spirit, we are once again a Data Privacy Week Champion. As one of the leading cloud providers in the nation, we know full well how important it is to recognize and support the principle that all organizations share the responsibility of protecting information.

Data Privacy Week Raises Awareness Within Organizations

The COVID-19 pandemic has blurred private environments, like bedrooms and living rooms, into corporate offices, given our increased dependence on remote workforces. A universal respect for privacy has never been more important: the pandemic has also increased international attacks on American businesses, and this has left the homes of remote workers vulnerable to cyberthreats most common in traditional office settings.

EstesGroup helps businesses manage data through advanced cloud-based solutions that offer the protection levels trusted by medical record keepers, law offices, manufacturers, distributors, and more. We promise to guard our clients at every level possible:

We protect online data, and we secure offline data with the same robust approach to risk management that makes even the most sensitive information safe in the hands of our IT staff.

We prevent unauthorized access and ensure that compliance regulations are not only met, but exceeded.

We secure employees wherever they are and train them to protect themselves against the perils of digital harm.

We educate our customers so that they handle their data wisely and keep everyone in their networks and supply chains safe from cyberthreats.

Data collection is only increasing, and the risks are following suit.

The Pew Research Center reports that 79% of adults in the United States are worried about the security of their data as it is handled by organizations. Here are a few tips to earn the trust of your employees and customers by deploying secure privacy management strategies:

Save now, secure now: There is no room for procrastination in cybersecurity. If you save the data, protect it.
Go now, know now: Choose your cyber pathways wisely, and know who in your company is traveling where and ensure that you are documenting digital tracks so that a breach can be traced after disaster strikes.
Collect now, share now: If you are collecting information, inform your employees and customers about how you are saving, using, and sharing information through clear and concise policies that abide by privacy laws.
Behave now, train now: Know how to behave and train your employees to do likewise.

Understand Data Privacy

Get a free cyber health check from EstesGroup.
Sign up for a full security audit at least once a year.
Enroll in educational programs at least once a year so that you’re fully informed about how the digital landscape is changing.

Manage Data Privacy

Distribute and post current policies to all employees.
Delete unused applications and move vulnerable data offline using secure backup plans.
Use firewalls, encryption, cybersecurity solutions, and disaster recovery planning services.
Move operations into a private or hybrid cloud environment for the most control over your data, ensuring cybersecurity and privacy at every endpoint.
Ensure that your partners and vendors have up-to-date privacy measures in place so that your employees and customers are also protected in your extended network.

For more information regarding adoption of a robust privacy framework to meet industry compliance regulations, please learn more about NIST. If you would like help understanding the details of NIST Privacy Framework, AICPA Privacy Management Framework, ISO/IEC 27701 – International Standard for Privacy Information Management, please contact the EstesCloud team.

As privacy management champions, we have your back — and can manage your backup, too.

VIEW OUR GUIDE TO REMOTE WORKER PRIVACY MANAGEMENT

Trailer Telematics: How Cloud Technology is Driving Success

by Brad Feakes | Jan 13, 2022 | Cloud, Distribution, Epicor, Hosting, Managed IT Services, Prophet 21

As trucking companies move closer to the goal of driverless vehicles, the technology that will enable this mission continues to improve. With this improvement comes a vast amount of information regarding the status of a given load. Enter the fleet of trailer telematics fueled by cloud technology.

What is trailer telematics?

Trailer telematics refers to a suite of technologies that provides the visibility needed to allow fleet managers to better control the key elements that impact the effectiveness of their fleet out in the field:

Finding viable trailers to use out in the field
Optimizing the rate that trailers get loaded, to ensure that as many tractors as possible have a viable load
Providing alerts when pickups and deliveries are made
Tracking the location and status of trailers between the point of load and the point of delivery
Tracking the status of various elements of a trailer (wheels, lights, etc.) to ensure that they are in working order

How does trailer telematics work?

Essentially, a suite of devices are installed on a given trailer, and these devices monitor various aspects of the trailer in question, and relay them back to a cloud server, where the data is delivered back to the trailer owner, normally via a web interface.

The presence of cloud technology here is key.

Telematics companies are really SaaS solution providers masquerading as hardware dealers, and this allows for surprising extensions in functionality. While many of these capabilities are reactive in nature, an additional and still-evolving benefit to these technologies is the ability to provide predictive analytics to proactively react to potential problems.

With all of this data in the cloud, the application of AI analytics allows providers to mine this raw data for useful information, which can allow companies to proactively manage everything from security to regulations:

Safety
Utilization
Costs
Maintenance
Compliance

What does this mean for distributors?

For distributors leveraging their own fleet, the benefits should be self-evident — better opportunities to keep trucks on the road. But even for distributors working through third-party logistics providers, there are several potential benefits that might be available.

Location Control

One immediate opportunity relates to visibility of delivery. The location control aspects of telematics allow for a real-time understanding of where your delivery currently resides, whether incoming or outgoing. This should allow distributors to plan for the realities of delivery timing, while also providing opportunities for expediting, negotiation, and accountability management in real time, allowing proactive companies to be the “squeakiest wheel” on the trailer.

Time and Tracking

As customers demand tighter delivery schedules, the ability to track your product to the day and to hour becomes critical, and your 3PL (third-party logistics) should, at some point, be able to provide this level of information. Moreover, as trailer location control becomes a reality, the ability to locate and schedule backhauls, based on the specific location of a given rig at any moment, becomes a reality.

Cloud technology helps distributors get the information they need to stay competitive.

The lesson to be learned here is that the information is out there, and it’s only getting better. Ask your freight provider whether they have that information, and how they can make it available to you.

Wondering how cloud technology will fit into your distribution technology plan for 2022 and beyond? Contact our cloud specialists today. Our IT industry experts would love to begin a conversation about trailer telematics solutions, supply chain management, data analytics, or other trends affecting distributors of the future. Reduce costs today by moving your trailer data to the EstesCloud platform, a private cloud hosting solution with hybrid cloud options. Support your telematics technology with help from our cloud consultants.

EstesCloud is the ultimate cybersecurity and backup and disaster recovery solution for manufacturers and distributors. Keep web-enabled and web-driven data safe. Secure your telematics devices through the preventative maintenance strategy of cutting-edge cloud technology. Private cloud technology helps you reduce maintenance costs while also protecting you against the risks of highly connected solutions like trailer telematics systems. Got trailer tracking on your company roadmap? The weather’s never been better to drive your commercial vehicles into a custom cloud built to fit the needs of your business. Smart cloud, smart trailer.

Two Sides to Every Cloud ERP Adoption Story

by EstesCloud | Dec 29, 2021 | Cloud, Disaster Recovery, ERP, ERP Implementation, Hosting, Managed IT Services

Understanding Your Move to the Cloud

Cloud adoption is often as unique as your company culture. However, the common benefits of cloud adoption abound. You can save time and money while increasing security, availability, and scalability. If you choose a cloud-based ERP deployment, what do you need for a successful cloud migration? Do you need to have a Shakespearean team ready to write the future story of your company? Once on the stage, will your cloud adoption tale be a tragedy or a comedy? Let’s try to understand the people behind your move to the cloud to better write your cloud adoption plan.

Cloud experts (consultants, migration specialists, engineers)
Enterprise resource planning experts (ERP consultants, trained employees)
Decision makers (steering committee members, owners, leaders)
Cloud ERP users (internal staff, external support)
Data center staff (consultants, architects, engineers, help desk team members)

Do you need cloud-savvy ERP experts on your team?

Make better decisions when moving your business applications to the cloud by balancing your decision-making team with your hands-on enterprise resource planning (ERP) talent. You can save even more time and money by supporting your in-house managers with ERP and cloud ERP consultants or experts when needed.

Quick Cloud ERP Adoption Planning Tip

An independent ERP consultancy can offer you an unbiased view of your decisions ahead, especially when it comes to newer technology and software releases.

Who will write your first line of cloud code?

Choosing a cloud for an ERP system might begin with someone on your IT team who has a progressive vision for the technological management of your company. Or, an ERP system, like Epicor Kinetic or Epicor Prophet 21, might be purchased simultaneously with cloud ERP project team formation and then guided by key players, such as company owners, CEOs, CIOs, and onward.

Understanding Your Business Cloud Requirements

A cloud ERP vendor might try to convince you that Software as a Service (SaaS) is your best, even your only, option. However, before you sign up for a data migration to a public cloud, consider private cloud or hybrid cloud platforms.

An ERP solution adapts to your unique cloud strategy. Once you understand your cloud ERP solution options and decide that your project plan should indeed migrate away from on-premise infrastructure, it’s time to solidify teams and team strategies. Your ERP implementation team needs both thinkers and doers.

The Thinkers

Your steering group will monitor the progress of your project ensuring it stays on track to complete on time and on budget. This group also will provide support for the project making sure needed resources are available to the project as needed and helping to backfill when those resources are taken from another part of the business.

The project manager is part of this group. Regularly the project manager will provide status reports and predictions for the immediate future of the project. An executive sponsor represents top management and is part of the steering group. That person will report project status to the C-level team.

When there is a champion who was instrumental in moving the software acquisition along and likes their role keeping the business excited about the prospect the software will bring, that champion should be on the steering group. Some representation from departments and functions that will use the new software might also have a seat in this group.

The Doers

Your cloud ERP implementation team should include leaders from departments across the business. They are directly involved in the overall implementation of this software and its IT infrastructure and, in most cases, they and their peers will use the new software daily. Most of the people in this group will be full-time talent serving on the software project but will keep in contact with their former co-workers in the functions they came from.

Often people who were group managers get assigned to this group, but there is no reason to limit the team to managers or former managers. Team members should be passionate about the new ERP system, its infrastructure, and the benefits expected. They should be very knowledgeable in their particular function and have some expertise in the use of the ERP software and process flows throughout the business.

Members of the cloud ERP implementation team will coordinate work in sub-teams that will test transactions related to their functional area. As testing progresses, cloud ERP team members will coordinate testing that extends to more than one function.

This group of people must keep in contact with their previous functional groups ensuring they know about any new changes or challenges. Managers of those functions will want to know the progress of the software implementation and will want to make choices when options in the implementation arise.

This team will help set up training and the training processes that will be used to share knowledge developed during implementation with the users who will need that knowledge to do their work with the new system.

Implementation team members do not need to be information technology gurus. They should understand some basic concepts related to IT and databases. This team will be directly involved in capturing legacy data and moving that data to the new software and, ultimately, to the cloud infrastructure of your choosing.

Look for the following indicators of a successful cloud adoption plan execution when choosing your cloud provider, your data center, and your cloud ERP implementation partner:

Is this a vendor trying to upsell you? Can a vendor-managed SaaS ERP system support your growing business?
Can your cloud provider meet your budget needs while adapting to your project timeline?
Does your cloud provider have a strong history and good reputation?
Does your cloud provider’s data center meet your needs for uptime and security?
Does your potential cloud ERP partner provide staff that will fit into your ERP culture?
Will the cloud provider understand your enterprise resource planning methodology and serve as a source of expertise for your ERP software and the full spectrum of its deployment options?

Will cloud ERP adoption improve your business today?

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software implementation is a long, challenging commitment that involves dozens of people working together toward a common goal. Your go-live in the cloud will be one of the most rewarding and promising days in your company’s story. You can expect immediate results as soon as your team is empowered by both the software and its underlying technology.

To begin work as cloud ERP implementation team members, training is key. Your cloud provider will enroll your team in an in-depth training for your new cloud-based ERP system. Your team will learn how cloud computing works, especially from the cybersecurity aspect, and will quickly become astute through real-time support for the new business processes. Part of the training will be introductions to developers and system support personnel at your cloud provider. Implementation team members will not need to solve every problem but will know where to look for the answers.

EstesGroup provides on-premise ERP expertise while also fully supporting cloud migrations to private clouds, hybrid clouds, and SaaS projects. Are you ready to take advantage of internet connectivity to move beyond on-site servers? Do you need help building a cloud ERP plan for 2022? We have Epicor Kinetic ERP hosting, Epicor Prophet 21 ERP hosting, Sage hosting, and Syspro hosting experts standing by, ready to answer your questions about cloud migrations for both new and old ERP systems. Our experts can help you meet your business requirements so that you stay competitive while reducing cost across your infrastructure.

Get help now with your cloud ERP adoption strategy

Epicor Kinetic Upgrade: A Customer Perspective

by Rob McMillen | Nov 5, 2021 | Cloud, Epicor, Epicor Kinetic, ERP, ERP Implementation, Hosting

An Interview with an Epicor Kinetic User

I recently had the opportunity to sit down with an Epicor customer to discuss their recent upgrade to Epicor Kinetic 2021.1. For many Epicor customers, this is a decision they will be facing in the next 12 months since the Epicor lifecycle for 10.2.700 will create a decision point in September 2022.

During the discussion, we covered a lot of questions that are commonly asked. My hope is that what you learn here will be an input to your thought process about when and how to upgrade to Epicor Kinetic.

Conservation of Manufacturing Energy

Epicor History

This customer has been using Epicor for almost 8 years after they went live on version 10x. After the implementation they fell into the habit of not upgrading on a cadence. They regretted this because it made upgrades more challenging. Plus maintaining an Epicor upgrade cadence would have benefited them with better Epicor support, fixes, and new features. In their situation they were faced with upgrading to Epicor Kinetic from V10.2.200.

They currently have 35 users and expect to expand to 50 users in the next 12 months. They do light manufacturing and lean more to the distribution side of the spectrum. They also use Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and a Business Intelligence (BI) solution that interfaces with Epicor.

Upgrade to Kinetic

The upgrade process took them about 90 days of effort. Knowing that future upgrades are released regularly, they invested front-end effort into documenting their business processes, end-user procedures and customizations. They also developed standard test plans that they can reuse in the future when they need to do upgrades.

They are expecting this investment to pay off as they move to 2021.2 later this Fall. During the upgrade preparation they took some time to clean up reports on the system, review their over 300 dashboards and look for ways to reduce the complexity and number of customizations that had accumulated over the years.

They then did very thorough testing in a Pilot Kinetics environment. The testing used formal test plans with each department supporting the effort. They ran all reports and validated cross-functional capabilities of the new system using a copy of their production 10.x data. As they found issues, they created solutions and documented them.

Reports

They found that many of their reports didn’t fully convert over to the new Kinetics format. So, they reached out to get external SSRS support for conversion of these reports. They were able to resolve any conversion issues with their dashboard reports using internal resources. This typically involved compiling them in the new environment and then saving them in the new Kinetic format.

Menus

They also set up two separate menu structures, one with a Kinetic look and one with the Classic look. This allowed users who were hesitant to use the new Kinetic menus some time to adjust. They estimate that they will transition all users away from the Classic view over a nine-month period.

Epicor Kinetic Upgrade Process

The actual upgrade was done on the 3rd weekend of the month to avoid month-end closing activities. They pre-arranged for necessary on-call support and proceeded with the upgrade. It finished and they applied any solutions they had discovered during testing. Then they tested the overall functionality using some pre-determined tests. No glaring issues were found so they were able to release the environment to users.

They found that the minor kinks that remained took them about 30-45 days to resolve. They were pleased that there were no issues with user permissions after the upgrade or with printing and labels.

Lessons Learned

Here are a few Epicor Kinetic upgrade suggestions from the customer perspective:

Make sure you have the necessary licenses for your Pilot environment,
Don’t forget the testing of integrations that access or share data with Epicor,
Make sure that department heads sign off on the test plans, so they understand any gaps/concerns, and
Consider using the developed Test Plans to next create new End User Documentation.

In the end, they felt like the Epicor Kinetic upgrade was more of a UI and programming change than a lot of new features for their users.

One More Thing

In retrospect they had one other recommendation that I found valuable.

Since the new Kinetics Users Interface (UI) allows all Forms to be displayed in any popular browser, there is an important decision to make. The decision is whether to allow Users to access Epicor from personal devices (tablets, home computers, phones). Most companies will have security concerns that will affect this decision. In their case, they decided to not allow users to use personal devices for accessing the Epicor application.

Overall, this customer was pleased with the upgraded UI. They found that the new UI is cleaner and more modern. Plus, the users like the ability to sort, and rearrange columns on the screen. In version 2021.1 some of the features they needed still required them to use the Classic interface, but the new release 2021.2 seems to have resolved these problems.

For now, the largest issue has been helping users make the transition to the new User Interface. Some users felt it was a steep learning curve for them and others didn’t. It confirmed for them that users rarely like change particularly in the screens they use each day. That’s why it is important to give them time to experiment and view the new interface well before any upgrade.

The I.T. department didn’t see any speed issues with processing under the new release. And they are looking forward to not having to install/upgrade clients on user laptops/desktops as they fully use the new Kinetics interface.

I hope this quick look at one client’s experience will provide some background for your decision-making and spur some questions that your organization needs to explore. If you have any other questions, feel free to reach out to us.

Ask the Author about your Kinetic ERP Project

Rob McMillen is a Senior Project Manager with EstesGroup. He has worked in the manufacturing industry for over 30 years supporting multiple implementations of new ERP systems and leading projects. Because his mom was an English teacher, he grew up with a love of writing. Combined with his working experience, he has written articles for LinkedIn and User Groups, and has published numerous blog posts. He is also a co-author of a book on technology and working collaboratively. He currently lives in the DFW area. Ask Rob a question now by clicking here to visit our “Ask An Expert” page.

Do you need help with keeping your ERP project kinetic?

For 18 years, EstesGroup has helped manufacturers and distributors implement, optimize, and support their ERP systems. With veteran consultants highly skilled in both the old Epicor ERP versions and in the latest version, our upgrade service is all-inclusive. Our Cloud ERP experts can help you understand everything from data migration to upgrade tools. We support companies on every version of Epicor, so whether you want to maintain your old system or upgrade to the latest release, you’ll find everything you need to make your application studio shine.

Are software upgrades or technology upgrades in your future? Our IT experts are here to help with your business. Are you wondering how to upgrade to Epicor Kinetic? Rather than focusing on your Epicor software, or other ERP system, focus on the work you love. Let our Epicor Kinetic experts do the busy work, the maintenance, and the specialized tasks while you focus on manufacturing. Put your data in a private cloud hosted environment for ultimate backup & disaster recovery and cybersecurity.

What Cloud is Your Cloud Provider On?

by Brad Feakes | Oct 26, 2021 | Cloud, ERP, ERP Implementation, Hosting, Managed IT Services, Software

ERP Hosting is Better Than a Trip to the Ice Cream Parlor

The age of “mass customization” pervades many areas of our business and personal lives. The general populace has grown accustomed to being able to “dial in” solutions as needed, especially when it comes to products and services. Tailored solutions have become a competitive advantage, if not a necessity, these days, and every cloud provider claims variety and customizability, even in the ever-so rigid atmosphere of SaaS (Software as a Service). If you’re looking for a cloud provider for your ERP (enterprise resource planning) application, do you ask where your new infrastructure team will actually cloud your data?

Ice cream parlors have been playing the variety card for decades. I have always been a fan of a good sundae—a little of this, a sprinkle of that, one flavor, two… the combinations are endless, as are the effects on my palate. But no two ice cream parlors are created equal. Similarly, no two cloud providers are created equal. Sometimes it feels like there are no standards that govern what it exactly means to be “flexible” in the cloud or to have “scalability” in the cloud. Like with ice cream parlors, sometimes vanilla is nothing more than artificial vanilla flavoring. This means that as a cloud solutions buyer, you need to understand the unique build of your server infrastructure before you sign the cloud services agreement.

Cloud Provider for ERP Business Applications

In the cloud computing world, an ice cream sundae model for ERP application deployment is a natural progression of the mass customization movement. After all, flexibility and scalability are defining features of cloud computing.

Nevertheless, the big players in cloud solutions continue to pull us back into a world of vanilla (or vanilla flavoring). Tiered pricing models, service bundles, rigid step-progressions, and consumption models that do not adjust for seasonality leave many cloud customers feeling like they are trapped in an artificial vanilla apocalypse. Cloud computing is defined by its flexibility, but you wouldn’t know this when reading the fine print of your IT service contract.

That is to say, application deployment is not a one-size-fits-all proposition, even if your cloud provider is positioning it in that manner.

Some customers, with small footprints and standard business requirements, fit nicely within a software as a service (SaaS) framework when it comes to deploying ERP systems. However, many customers of greater size and complexity struggle with the limitations of SaaS. They want levels of access and control that are not normally afforded by SaaS deployment models. But exactly what a customer wants and needs differs from customer to customer. For suppliers offering very rigid solution sets, this can be a problem.

Some customers want a level of access and control that SaaS can’t support. They still want their cloud server stack micro-managed, but they don’t have the internal resources to perform the management. These customers lean toward managed ERP hosting, which falls more closely under a platform as a service (PaaS) model, where the solution provider manages the infrastructure and application platform layers, and the customer consumes the final output.

Other customers have the in-house staff and expertise to manage their own architecture. They want the solution provider to set up an ecosystem, but intend to take ownership and management of that ecosystem thereafter. These folks don’t need managed hosting, as they can perform any micro-management themselves. The solutions to satisfy these customers fall more under an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) model, where the solution provider provides the infrastructure, and the management of the application layer is the client’s responsibility.

But such simple distinctions between PaaS and IaaS seem too rigid for many customers. Many customers want something in between. They desire a combination of service, access, control, and responsibility. A sprinkle of this, a dash of that, a little smooth, a little crunchy.

As a customer, you need to make sure your cloud solution provider can lay out the various features and options that comprise their solution and help you work though a combination that fits your business. This might involve user provisioning, backup and disaster recovery, performance monitoring and tuning, or general application administration. Whatever the case, make sure your cloud solution provider is not trying to drown you in vanilla.

A Few More Clouds (and Cloud Providers) to Ponder

What types of cloud computing would you trust with your ERP software deployment? If you are considering managed hosting, are you looking for other managed services as well, such as cloud security services? Are you looking for a flexible data center for a hybrid cloud deployment, perhaps with pricing on a pay-as-you-go basis. Do you know your hardware and software needs? When you open a web browser on a corporate computer, do you know if any of your business data is kept in a public cloud?