Need Add-Ons for your ERP? The Cloud Remains a Great Option
Need Add-Ons for your ERP? The Cloud Remains a Great Option
Today, businesses are faced with difficult technology decisions every day. A prime example, is Infrastructure and must have systems that allow the business to successfully operate. Many companies are making decisions on cloud based or on-premise ERP deployments. Years ago, needed Add-Ons may have dictated this decision. But not now.
This is the third blog in our recent blog series - on why you should consider add-ons for your business. Read parts 1: Why most companies need special "Add-Ons" for their ERP and 2: What to Look for When Shopping for ERP Add-Ons.
On-Premise vs Cloud Deployment – Then
On-premise refers to software that resides on your company's own server protected by an internal firewall and supported by a resident IT resource of your choosing (internal of contractor). For a long time, on-premise was the only way to integrate Add-Ons to support your ERP deployment. Cloud was perceived to be for “vanilla” deployments, which often are unpopular, or impractical for many manufacturers and distributors. But that perception has changed. Cloud deployment, in contrast, is hosted and supported remotely on external servers by a third-party providers, AWS being the world’s largest with their global multi-billion dollar infrastructure. Cloud-based servers provide data or functionality on a Pay As Needed basis, so they can fit more effectively to meet the needs of your enterprise and are much easier to scale. They also require minimal effort to get started. Simply put, this option has gotten better. Much better.
On-Premise vs Cloud Deployment – Now
Our AWS hosting partner has helped our ERP clients deploy both “multi-tenant” and “dedicated” environments. Multi-tenant is closer to the “vanilla” version mentioned above. Make no mistake, although limited, this is a very cost-effective option. Back to Add-Ons. “Dedicated” means that Add On’s and unique software are possible to deploy in the cloud, without building an internal IT infrastructure. In short, a dedicated environment marries the benefits of cloud with those of Add On’s that companies find so critical to their business. Dedicated will be more expensive than multi-tenant. But the real comparison is with on-premise. We’ve seen the dedicated approach proven to be more cost effective for a myriad of reasons.
We encourage you to contact us if you are interested in a dedicated environment for your new ERP. Acuity is an authorized partner of SAP – and we deploy the SAP Business One product in the cloud working with our AWS partner.