Cel mai deschis blog despre afaceri și tehnologie

Few years ago, only large companies needed ERP software. Now, it can benefit form this technology even the small and mid-size businesses. In a recent article published on erpsoftwareblog, Jeff Pyden stated that the cloud computing technology is faster adopted by businesses with no more than 50 employees. In his opinion, „the emergence of the cloud is yet another step toward making this powerful technology available to those who otherwise may not be able to afford it.”

He indicated five reasons why small and mid-size businesses prefer a cloud ERP solution rather than a traditional one: limited budgets, faster deployment, security and data management, businesses continuity, growth and scale.

The first indicated reason - limited budgets - refers to the total costs of implementing and maintaining an on-premise ERP solution, which „is often not feasible for small businesses”. „It’s difficult for many small and mid-sized businesses to afford the up-front costs of an on-premise ERP solution”, Jeff said. But what is the option? An open source ERP, of course. For example, the total cost of implementation and use of our open source solution, SocrateOpen, is less than the on-premise version.

The faster deployment refers to the fact that „a cloud-hosted ERP solution can be deployed quickly, allowing businesses to start reaping the benefits of the solution sooner”. By streamlining and connecting internal processes, such as finance, sales, marketing, invoicing and others, „organizations can work more efficiently and gain a competitive edge from the beginning”.

In terms of business continuity, with an ERP system in the cloud, „it’s easier to get back up and running after unforeseen interruptions”, said Pyden. In other words, it’s important to consider a solution that is accessible via the cloud, because you will be able to recover data more quickly than from a physical database.

Finally, the „growth and scale” reason refers to changes that occur in a business lifetime, which can becomes larger or fluctuate in size, and in this case the „cloud-based applications can easily scale to accommodate growth”. This means that users can quickly be added or removed as needed.

The conclusion is that the ERP in the cloud is good for small and mid-size organizations, cause „cloud-based applications can provide fundamental business services to young companies at a fraction of the cost”.

I wrote earlier on December 2010 an article about what should I know when I want to implement an ERP system. I said than that are 7 steps you should not skip and 5 factors that you should not be omitted. I come now and fill in what I said in December. Besides the steps not to skip and the factors not to omitted, for a successful implementation you must follow another four guidelines:
1. Take small steps to implementation
2. Focus on the long term benefits of the implementation
3. Don’t make the new software feel like the old software (if it si the case!)
4. Be flexible with the implementation plan
You must keep in mind that every company and every implementation is a little different. Your software implementation project will take time, hard work from everyone involved, and the dedication of your project team. And be prepared for the small deviations that will inevitably occur. But, if you and provider`s implementation team will work together, the ERP Implementation projects will be a success.

David Linthicum said recently, in his article published on InfoWorld.com, that „those who follow the world of business intelligence (BI) have probably noticed both an increase in new cloud BI providers and the movement of existing providers to the cloud”. BI in the clouds means that the information is copied to a cloud data warehouse and then is structured, typically around the important parts of a business: sales, inventory, manufactoring, payments. „Once the data is in the cloud, you can run reports, create dashboards, and perform analytical operations that support core business decisions from a Web app”, said Linthicum. He belives that the use of Business Intelligence in the cloud is „a game-changer”, being „affordable and available” to those who need access to this information.

But what is the benefit? Why should I choose a cloud BI solution instead of a traditional BI solution?

According to Linthicum and other specialists in cloud computing, the traditional data warehousing and BI „have always been too expensive” and moreover, the users who needed these BI systems to make critical business decisions „typically had no access, with IT citing cost and complexity of deploying and managing the front-end BI tools”. Instead, with a cloud-based BI, the cost drops dramatically and managers „can use the information to improve business operations when it counts”. Plus, cloud-based BI provides better support for smartphones and tablets and makes it available to those who actually need them.

So, there are enough benefits for you?

The most common question on almost every manager lips is „Why do I need an ERP system?”. And the answers provided by the ERP suppliers are: to reducing costs and to increase your profit,

I've discovered, on erpsoftwareblog.com, an excellent article about the needs of companies in the process of implementing an ERP solution, signed by Steve Kane, from Broadpoint Technologies.

Timo Elliott wrote, earlier this month, a post about the differences between Business Intelligence & Business Analytics. Post which I think is interesting.

As is announced on their blog, the MicroStrategy BI software platform will be available as a service in the cloud. With MicroStrategy Cloud Intelligence, MicroStrategy will host and maintain the entire BI environment, including servers, operating system, MicroStrategy 9 software and network. As they said on official MicroStrategy website, „MicroStrategy Cloud Intelligence is expected to offer elastic capacity to meet the availability and performance requirements necessary for critical BI reporting and analysis, supporting both small usage patterns for departmental BI applications, as well as the high-scale usage patterns for extranet applications”. With MicroStrategy Cloud Intelligence, which is currently in beta testing, subscribers will have full access to MicroStrategy Technical Support for assistance. Cloud Intelligence can be a means of providing the best configuration, support, and maintenance straight from MicroStrategy by offering it through the cloud. If you need more informations about it, take a look to http://blog.microstrategy.com/2011/02/wrap-up-of-microstrategy-world-2011/#more-657

I read recently, on LinkedIn, a debate about how firm size does or doesnt matter when you want to switch to using Collaborative Cloud. And the conclusion of the debate was that company size does not matter when it comes to the collaborative cloud. The myth that says that collaborative cloud roll-outs is just for small companies has been dismantled by most of the participants to the discussion. According to them, the truth is that the large companies have much more to benefit from collaborative cloud, both from a change management and behavioral change standpoint. And this because collaborative cloud is built on social media driven technology. It’s built to be intuitive, easy to adapt and easy to roll-out. Social media driven technology is designed to bring individuals together, communicate together, knowledge share together. The question is why would large companies step away from this opportunity. Some of the views expressed in the debate you can read here. But what is your answer?

I read recently that the general consensus is that the Business Intelligence (BI) and Analytics in the cloud is a fast growing market, with an annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22.4% through 2013.
But there are some questions that still awaiting answers from experts. One of those questions is „Do I should move all the data, warehouses and associated processes in the cloud?” And this because at the moment, for the most enterprises, not only all the data warehouses are on-premise, but the majority of the business systems that feed data into these warehouses are on-premise as well.
The second important question is: „The databases can run natively on the cloud?”
The majority of on-premise data warehouses run on some flavor of a columnar database and the most Business Intelligence tools use SQL to access data from these data warehouses. So, the big problem is that these databases are not inherently designed to run natively on the cloud.
Finally, another very important question is: „How work on the cloud the I/O virtualization?” In other worlds, one of the major issues with the large data warehouses is, well, the data itself. Any kind of complex query typically involves an intensive I/O computation. But, the I/O virtualization on the cloud, simply does not work for large data sets.
So that for Business Intelligence in the cloud to be successful, what we really need is ability for scale-out block I/O, just like scale-out computing.

In this knowledge-based economy, the corporations’ value, as well as the one of organizations and individuals, is directly related to their knowledge and intellectual capital. Knowledge can move inside firms and among exchange partners through e-business systems, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Despite of the enormous potential and delivery capabilities of such tools, organizations needed a new instrument that would offer the decision makers valuable insight regarding various business processes and allow them to make better decisions. It is this necessity that has set the premises for the birth of a new powerful tool with a tremendous impact on the business world: Business Intelligence (BI).