Hosting Archives - Page 7 of 11

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?

Are you in need of a tailored cloud solution for your ERP application’s deployment? Chat with us now and get a free technology assessment!

5 Signs Your Business Needs Cybersecurity Training

by EstesCloud | Oct 20, 2021 | Backup, Cloud, Disaster Recovery, Hosting, Managed IT Services, Network Security, Security

Cybersecurity Education Begins With Ownership

Small and medium sized business owners beware! 65% of attacks that originate in cyberspace are aimed at companies that think they’re too small to be of interest to cybercriminals. If you think you’re at low risk, read on and see why our IT security consultants recommend cybersecurity training for everyone.

Cybersecurity Training Hacker in Network Security Lock

Are you a small business owner? Or are you a once-small company now grown into the medium range of corporate presence? When it comes to cybersecurity solutions for businesses, you always have to structure your services and behavior to prepare as if you’re bigger than you are. This involves a comprehensive security solution that covers your entire company network, from suppliers to employees. Do you have an enterprise-level cybersecurity strategy that protects every connection and end user from digital harm?

If you own a business, you know how precious your data is to daily operations. Profitability depends on good data management behaviors. Because all companies are vulnerable to hackers, your data should be presumed insecure. Cybersecurity should be a proactive approach to cybercrime, rather than a reactive (disaster recovery) move.

Are you on a cybercrime watchlist?

Breaches happen, even to the most prepared companies. Therefore, your risk management policies should be revisited frequently. Business owners should be part of this process. A board of advisors might be beneficial, and it can be cost-effective to outsource this high-level cybersecurity work to a virtual CIO or to a firm with the technology skills that guarantee security for your data.

What happens when a hacker is watching your business?

It takes about a half of a year for business owners to become aware that a hacker has breached the network. It also takes about two months to react to a cyber attack.

Here are five signs your business is at risk and in need of cybersecurity training:

1. You are a small or medium size business.

Far less likely to report cybercrime to the authorities, small and midsized companies are viewed by hackers as a low-risk target. Manufacturers and distributors are often looking to scale, and maintaining a good reputation is key to a successful future. As a growing business, you wouldn’t want your reputation to include a history of victimization by way of ransomware.

2. You think it’s a small problem or that someone else is addressing the issue of cyber safety.

Fear of expense often prevents small and midsize manufacturers and distributors from securing the technology solutions and services they need to protect their data. A good backup solution isn’t enough, even though this is what many company owners depend on for risk management. When planning your IT department budget, price out outsourced help, especially when it comes to cybersecurity. Often, the experts at an IT managed services provider (MSP) will be more friendly to the budget than on-site technology staff.

3. You think you need to cut the IT budget… but IT costs are actually decreasing.

Firewalls and phishing filters are a necessity these days. Due to a mix of popularity and availability, technology cost trends show that business owners can get enterprise-level technology services with affordable pricing. Cloud-based IT services, such as SECaaS (Security as a Service) look at the unique needs of your business and adjust pricing accordingly. Only pay for what you need.

4. Your employees don’t know what they don’t know.

Cybersecurity training might be the most important activity you schedule for the end of 2021 or the beginning of 2022. The time is now. Hackers take advantage of poorly trained employees on a daily basis. 95% of security breaches are successful because of human error. Train, train, and train again. Technology is an ever-evolving field, and this ripples into the dark web as cutting-edge malware. Protecting your talented staff from the dark web is key to employee retention in today’s culture.

Fortunately, cyber education is often free online. Formal training is easy on the budget. If you have a million customers relying on your manufacturing operations to maintain uptime, your cyber security plan needs to defend more than credit card numbers and social security numbers. You need an IT solution that comprehensively protects the countless connections along your supply chain, right down to the home offices of your remote workers.

Sign up for a ransomware simulation attack today to see if your employees are ready for disaster. Employees are eager to learn security breach mitigation strategies because their personal information is at risk in the event of a data leak. Information security begins with security training.

5. You’re likely to pay the ransom if you are attacked.

More than half of small businesses pay a ransom. Reasons revolve around damage control: you definitely don’t want your data or your reputation harmed by a ransomware attack, so in the moment you are likely to pay the attacker. If you think you’d be likely to pay a ransomer to get your data back, then you stand unprepared. Once you have a solid cybersecurity plan in place with a crew of talented IT staff to support your solutions, you’ll know that you’ll never pay a hacker a dime of your earnings. In the event that you experience a breach, you’ll know that you have an incident response plan that won’t involve a ransom payment.

Today’s cyber landscape is riddled with massive corporations hitting the news for million-dollar ransomware attacks. When was your last security audit? It’s better to act as a big little company in a technology culture in which the hackers are frequently more skilled than even the best IT staff.

Empower your workers with the best solutions so that they can use their talents to their full extent.
Prevent identity theft of employees by securing personal data and corporate data.
Bring in a white hat hacker to test both onsite and remote cybersecurity solutions and services.

Can your staff respond properly to a data breach? Do you have an incident response plan clearly delineated so that all employees understand your disaster recovery process? Have employees been thoroughly trained to recognize cyber threats lurking in their email accounts as phishing attempts?

Cybersecurity training involves both on-premise and cloud-based breach mitigation techniques. EstesGroup offers coast-to-coast onsite and cloud IT services, including everything from project and budget planning to education and monitoring.

Scaling Up & Scaling Out in a P21 Ecosystem

by Brad Feakes | Oct 11, 2021 | Cloud, Epicor, ERP, Hosting, Prophet 21

P21 System Performance in Accordance

When deploying any enterprise-level application such as Epicor’s Prophet 21 ERP, system performance is an extremely important consideration, one that can have significant impact on the successful use of the application. Memory allocation, transaction logging, network connections and a litany of other factors can affect the user community’s experience of the application. Failures in any one of these areas can bring an application to a grinding halt. This is certainly the case in a P21 environment.

As such, the work of a P21 administrator is critical in the successful deployment and maintenance of the Prophet 21 ecosystem.

While the successful administration of a P21 environment will differ on several factors, such as the version installed, the presence of a middleware server, the use of terminal services, and the use of the legacy desktop application, the actions taken to attain, maintain, and sustain a P21 ecosystem can be summarized by the two following principles:

Scaling Up: Stacking up resources onto a single existing server, user terminal, network, or device to allow it to perform better and bear additional load.
Scaling Out: Branching out by breaking out additional servers, terminals, network connections or devices to improve the capacity and capability of the overall P21 infrastructure.

Scaling up in a Prophet 21 Ecosystem

Scaling up involves the addition of resources, most often to a server, to address issues with usage and performance. In many cases, the performance of a single server, whether it is an application server, a database server or a user terminal, can be improved by identifying the problem in question and judiciously allocating some additional resources, such as RAM, CPU, or storage.

Let’s use the Prophet 21 desktop application as an example. The architecture of the legacy desktop application was such that a single desktop client generally consumed one entire CPU when in use. This creates a challenge for terminal services, given that two users logged into the same terminal server cannot share the same CPU, as is the case with other applications.

To address this, system administrators need to “scale up” and add CPUs to the terminal server, to allow multiple users to work from it in parallel. This is of course easier to do when the computer is virtualized, so admins will want to consider this should they have the need to build out a remote desktop for their user community. Depending on the number of users in your company, such an approach to your P21 environment may be satisfactory.

With the shift from the legacy P21 desktop application to the P21 middleware server, the concern with scale similarly shifts. Scaling up under the modern architecture now involves the resources allocated to a given middleware server to allow it to handle heavier loads. Even here, it is not uncommon that companies encounter scaling issues with the P21 middleware server, as the company grows. In many cases, the answer is not to scale up, but to scale out.

Scaling out in a Prophet 21 Ecosystem

Using the example of the Prophet 21 desktop application, a company can scale up a single remote desktop so high before the additional building blocks no longer elevate its cause. In the case of a remote desktop, a single terminal server can support approximately 12 CPUs to support roughly 15 users working in parallel—any further and the platform begins to bend under the weight of its own design.

In this case, it is preferable to spin up a separate P21 terminal server to support additional user requirements, and to integrate the multiple servers with a broker to create a server farm.

A similar but updated concern relates to Epicor’s middleware application server layer, and the number of users it can support. As with the development of a Prophet 21 server farm for remote desktops, the need might arise to create a load-balanced farm of Prophet 21 middleware servers, in order to meet user needs.

The shift from a 2-tiered architecture, in which the fat client speaks directly to the database to a 3-tiered architecture, where the thin client speaks to the middleware server naturally shifts much of the heavy lifting from the traditional desktop client to the P21 middleware server itself.

Again, the specifications are ambiguous, but we’ve found that often a single Prophet 21 middleware server can be scaled up such that it will support roughly 50 concurrent users before the server can no longer perform any additional heavy lifting. In these cases, it is preferable to build out a new Prophet 21 middleware server in a load-balanced environment.

P21 Economies of Scale

In practice, helping users often involves some combination of scaling up and scaling out. It begins with an understanding of the scope and limitations of the Prophet 21 architecture and an understanding of the size of the user community and their needs. From there, the combinations and permutations become an intriguing and multifaceted challenge for the P21 administrator to circumnavigate.

LEARN WHAT TO DO WHEN YOUR VENDOR OFFERS SAAS ERP

Preventing Ransomware in the Automotive Aftermarket

by Brad Feakes | Sep 27, 2021 | Disaster Recovery, Distribution, Hosting, Managed IT Services, Manufacturing Innovation, Network Security, Security

How to Secure the Automotive Aftermarket

To help develop awareness of cybersecurity needs in the manufacturing and distribution industries, EstesGroup conducted a joint education session with the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA). SEMA is a trade association composed of manufacturers, distributors, retailers and specialists focused on automotive specialty parts and accessories.

The educational session,“Preventing Ransomware in the Automotive Aftermarket,” focused on the steps that SEMA members can do to mitigate cyber threats. These steps can help any business improve digital security, so I’d like to review some of the material covered concerning the landscape of cyber threats.

What is the Threat?

Threats to organizations are widespread and increasingly prolific. According to the 2021 Malware Report from Cybersecurity Insiders, 88% of a survey of 500,000 IT professionals and 76% of 30,000 small and medium-sized business owners say that cyberthreats are a significant and growing risk. The attack vectors are multifaceted, including spear phishing emails, domain spoofing, and man-in-the-middle attacks.

Cyberthreats are impacting organizations at all levels. On the business side, malware attacks caused both an increase in IT security-related spending and a decrease in productivity. At the IT operations level, ransomware is forcing cybersecurity professionals to update IT security strategies to focus on mitigation, as they struggle with data loss, downtime, and business continuity.

Watch the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) of “Preventing Ransomware in the Automotive Aftermarket”

Ransomware Questions, Security Answers

One might beg the question: Why is this happening? The reasons are surprisingly straightforward—the business of cyber warfare is a low-barrier, high-reward enterprise. The “startup costs” for a hacker who already has the necessary technical acumen are comparatively low, when compared to a traditional business environment.

The Reward is a Handsome Ransom

Cybersecurity is not merely an IT problem. It’s an enterprise-wide issue. As business owners, we do things to make our enterprises more integrated and efficient, and share information across the organization. But this creates new potential opportunities for exploitation. Moreover, since March of 2020, we and our fellow employees have been accessing our work environment from an increasingly remote context, further complicating company networks and creating new vulnerabilities.

Where are the Attacks Coming From?

The threats that proliferate our contemporary cyber landscape can be described as “hidden in plain sight” — the threat is as broad as the number of connected users, connected devices, and connected programs. It is not an exaggeration to say that every touchpoint is a potential threat. Some of the most common infiltration paths include the following:

Email: Email is a constant target of schemes and scams, and the attacks are getting more nuanced and personalized.
The Internet: Online infiltration dressed as information continues to be a source of attacks, with increasing attempts from hackers to disguise malicious domains to appear like the familiar sites that you know and love.
Programs & Applications: Within daily business operations, a company uses a surprising number of discrete applications. Whether online or installed on your devices, every program that we use for business purposes is a potential threat.
Integrations: The integrating of core systems with third-party applications increases the threat risk. We want the benefits of interconnectivity—for instance, we want our e-commerce system to speak to our inventory system so we know what is available to sell and ship. But in the hands of a hacker, that is a dangerous amount of information to possess.
Authentication: The credentials that users apply when accessing company resources can be a significant source of risk. Weak user credentials, simple passwords, and basic authentication policies can allow for significant system breeches.
The IOT Movement: The “internet of things” or “IOT” movement increased points of connectivity, and the number of viable targets. Who would have ever thought that you could get hacked by your refrigerator!
The BYOD Movement: The “bring your own device” or “BYOD” movement lowered the bar for device management. Increasingly, smartphones and other devices are accessing social media social media to access system resources. The risk here should be self-evident.
Remote Access: VPNs (or virtual private networks) provide extensive access to company networks. VPNs often provide more access than a user actually needs—it’s like providing access to the entire gymnasium just so you can reach the janitor’s closet.
COVID: The pandemic expanded the threat landscape, by increasing the number of remote users connected from a broader array of devices, many of them being inadequately-connected. On a broad scale, shared family devices were suddenly connecting to company headquarters.

The Future of Preventing Ransomware in the Automotive Aftermarket

As you can see, the threats are abundant, and the targets are many. The future of security in the automotive aftermarket depends on you and on your cybersecurity strategy. There are some simple steps that companies can take to mitigate the challenges of our current cyber landscape. To see what companies are doing to secure their organizations from threats, and what you can do to secure your future, please watch the recording of the SEMA educational session and come to our managed IT experts with any questions you have about current best practices for threat mitigation for businesses.

Let’s talk about cybersecurity and compliance regulations specific to your industry. Chat with us now to schedule a free technology assessment.

Views from Booth 25 – P21WWUG CONNECT 2021

by Brad Feakes | Aug 17, 2021 | Distribution, ERP, Hosting, Prophet 21

Prophet 21 Trade Show Truths

Dining and whining with the end users in the trenches of Prophet 21’s annual conference can elicit frank and poignant sentiments regarding the state of software and the state of the broader markets that it works to support. Listening to the triumphs and tribulations of the P21 customer base, we’ve gained a much better understanding of the challenges that face the distribution world in 2021 and beyond. With this in mind, we thought we’d pass along a few lessons learned from our time in our P21WWUG CONNECT booth this year.

P21WWUG CONNECT 2021 Booth 25 Miranda Fallas Chris Koplar Epicor Prophet 21

Many business owners find themselves at a crossroads, where they need to take the next big step to scale up their existing operations and to compete more effectively and support strategic growth initiatives. This growth might even involve developing a more global footprint, and this has massive infrastructure, cybersecurity, and compliance regulation needs.

Distribution Industry Material Supply Challenges

Material supply continues to be a primary concern for organizations, one that unfortunately extends beyond the capabilities of an ERP system. Shipping lane stagnation, port congestion, raw material shortages, truck driver labor shortages, offshore vendor shutdowns, and a variety of additional factors have thrown traditional supply chains into disarray.

Addressing the Challenges

Companies are taking various approaches to address many of the above situations. Pathways might include outward-focused initiatives like EDI, punchout, SRM, e-commerce to improve communication between suppliers and customers. More internally-focused approaches also abound, as companies try to get more efficient and effective in the areas of warehouse management, AP automation, AR collections and credit, and in the pursuit of more cost-effective application deployment strategies.

Suppliers vs. Distributors

Over the years, suppliers have developed an increasing and disproportionate influence on distributors, more than ever before. Supplier mandates are forcing distributors to sometimes take radical actions to reorient themselves to address new demands. The breadth and depth of new demands often corresponds with the comparative size of the suppliers in question, but may also relate to the commodities being supplied and their relative scarcity. That is to say, when demand outstrips supply, the suppliers can be more demanding.

New Software, New Support Needs

The release of new versions of the software, coupled with the expiration of legacy version support, has put many users in a heightened state, as they scramble to determine what the next steps of their upgrade and deployment lifecycle will entail. Related to this, the migration to the web-based interface is an area that many companies are struggling to work out, given their existing application footprint, and the differences in look, feel, and functionality between the new and the P21 legacy client versions.

Labor Shortages

While material shortages are a well-known and overarching concern related to the pandemic, shortages in labor are also becoming increasingly problematic. The inability to find able-bodied individuals to fill positions within supply chains caused significant changes for organizations in 2021 and distributors are concerned that they will persist into 2022.

Application Deployment Differences

Overheard at the conference: “I didn’t know there were any other options!”—as legacy versions approach their end-of-life dates, customers find themselves looking at alternate application deployment options—from continuing to locally host the application on-premise, to moving to Prophet 21’s SaaS version, to hybrid private cloud infrastructure-as-a-service models. In spite of the tumult, different options exist, and P21 customers are discovering just what is out there.

As supply chains become more complex than ever, Prophet 21 customers are looking for control, access, and visibility. Critical to the goal of ultimate control, especially in terms of access, cloud deployment can make or break the chain.

Cloud Crossroads or Crosshairs

Also overheard at the conference: “Cloud without access means no job—cloud with access means I still have a job.” A common theme with the P21 customers we’ve talked to with regard to cloud deployment has been a question of access. Customers generally require varying levels of control and access over their application deployment. Solutions that limit access and control create problems for companies not only in terms of employment but in terms of efficacy. At the end of the day, distribution industry leaders are hoping the crossroads of growth won’t put them in the crosshairs of a cluster-cloud.

This concludes our episode of “tales from the booth.” Were you able to attend this year? Tell us what you learned. Did you miss it this year? Let us know and we’ll tell you all about everything we learned at P21WWUG CONNECT 2021!

9 Questions to Answer at P21WWUG CONNECT

by Brad Feakes | Aug 9, 2021 | Cloud, ERP, Hosting, Prophet 21

P21WWUG CONNECT – BOOTH 25

The 2021 Prophet 21 user conference (P21WWUG CONNECT) is less than a week away. For those of us in attendance, it is an exciting time for collaboration and discovery. User conferences are a great opportunity to trade ideas with other users and get a sense of the shared and unique challenges faced by different companies, in different industries.

Having manned a few booths over the years, I’ve been lucky enough to hear many ERP stories and more than a few customer ERP quandaries. One such quandary that cyclically arises has to do with the question of application deployment. As hardware ages and operating systems expire, customers often find themselves scrambling to determine whether to replicate past deployment models or explore new options.

Distribution business worker using cloud hosted ERP technology

Software-as-a-service, public cloud, private cloud, managed hosting, infrastructure-as-a-service—the options abound and overlap, and it’s easy for options to slip though the cracks. As such, customers sometimes approach our booth simply looking to understand what options are available, relative to their current situation. In our conversations with such customers, we normally run though a set of questions to better understand our customer’s current state, the issues they face, and the opportunities available to them.

With that in mind, and with the P21WWUG CONNECT 2021 event on the horizon, it might be beneficial to understand some of the early considerations to make, as you approach the question of application deployment. Answers to these questions can set you on a path to understanding how you might want to deploy the next generation of your P21 application.

Do you have outdated hardware? How old are your servers?

As your hardware ages, it becomes an increasing risk to your organization, and many companies are accustomed to the 5-year cycle of hardware replacement. But the technical footprint of our current world differs considerably from five years ago, and this provides new options in 2021 that would not have been viable in 2016. Server deployments do not mandate an on-premise data center. Review the options for private cloud server deployments before signing the check for a new server stack.

Does the customer have outdated operating system of RDBMS versions causing downtime, security risks, lack of backups, compliance or cost?

Like hardware, an operating system can exceed its use-by date, creating several potential issues. This overlaps with version upgrades of your P21 ERP, as ERP versions are restricted to specific operating system and database versions. As such, ERP upgrades are often partnered with upgrades to a customer’s database and operating system.

Like hardware, an operating system can exceed its “use by” date, creating several potential issues. This overlaps with version upgrades of your P21 ERP, as ERP versions are restricted to specific operating system and database versions. As such, ERP upgrades are often partnered with upgrades to a customer’s database and operating system.

Are you struggling to find the right IT support for your hardware, your server, or your application?

Whether IT support is internally supplied, or outsourced from a managed service provider, companies frequently encounter support challenges, whether it is with capacity, capability, or delivery. Most often, as your business grows, your IT capacity might be stretched beyond its original capacity. Such is an opportunity to evaluate a cloud deployment, to apportion the management of the application to a partner, allowing you to focus on mission-critical IT projects and initiatives.

Is your P21 application currently hosted by another provider and are you looking for different options? Are you unhappy with your current situation due to downtime, latency, security, compliance or cost?

Even within a private cloud hosting environment, different options are available, in which certain resources are dedicated, while others are shared. These differences can impact price, performance, and service levels, and its important to understand whether the cloud configuration you’ve been provided is meeting your needs, or whether a different configuration, perhaps though a different provider, would be preferable.

Are you thinking about moving your Prophet 21 install “to the cloud” and looking to know more about what that might mean?

A cloud deployment of your P21 ERP application could mean different things. On one end of the spectrum, you have software as a service (SaaS). In SaaS, the application is deployed to a public cloud.

Is the customer on P21 SaaS and considering moving back to an on-premise / hosted /perpetual license version?

A software-as-a-service (SaaS) deployment of any ERP application can bring many benefits to an organization. But a SaaS deployment does not work for all customers, and it is not uncommon for customers to purchase a SaaS version of an ERP and decide to shift to its more robust and fully-functional perpetual-license counterpart. But moving back to a perpetual license does not mandate a move to an on-premise deployment. Cloud options are still available.

Are you planning for a P21 upgrade and looking for options?

An upgrade, especially a major release, can be an opportunity to consider your deployment options. What is the best way to deploy the new version? Does the new version change the server configuration in any way? Prophet 21’s deployment evolved across versions, as Epicor deployed a middleware application server layer as part of the new architecture. The change required a new server stack. Understand how big a jump you have in front of you by developing a P21 upgrade roadmap that includes a deployment that matches your business needs.

Are you concerned about Epicor dropping their support for the Legacy client and looking for options?

The rush to Epicor’s middleware server is too hasty for many in the user community, and customers are still trying to make sense of P21’s web client and hybrid client deployments. With this change comes opportunities to deploy hybrid client models, to allow certain users to continue to leverage the legacy client.

Is the customer looking to update overall technology stack as part of the implementation of an integrated system (E-commerce, SRM, CRM)?

Sometimes, the integration of a third-party platform requires an upgrade to the overall ecosystem. Such is an opportunity to review your server installation and consider your options.

Will you be at the P21WWUG CONNECT user conference this year? If so, come find us at Booth 25. We’d love to talk about application deployment, or whatever else is on your mind.

Let's Begin a Conversation