{"id":8890,"date":"2014-02-13T11:38:31","date_gmt":"2014-02-13T11:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/when-to-put-your-erp-system-in-the-cloud\/"},"modified":"2025-04-02T11:47:29","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T09:47:29","slug":"when-to-put-your-erp-system-in-the-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sg.syspro.com\/blog\/erp-for-manufacturing\/when-to-put-your-erp-system-in-the-cloud\/","title":{"rendered":"When to put your ERP system in the cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"

The other week I was at a friend\u2019s house having a barbeque when his granddaughter ran out of the house clutching my friend\u2019s iPad asking (in a way that only 4 year old girls can) to watch Peppa Pig. My friend\u2019s reaction was to tell her to put the TV on but the demand came back \u201cNO! On my pad, on my pad\u201d. I watched with interest as my friend downloaded a TV App on to the iPad and showed his granddaughter how to watch Peppa Pig in the garden whilst we continued to cook our lunch.<\/p>\n

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It struck me that I had just watched a classic example of the future of computing. Fast wireless access allowing easy download of apps. User interfaces simple enough for a small child to use. TV programs and data streaming onto mobile devices, all supported by the Internet and cloud computing. The most interesting part of this was that the people using this technology are not IT literate or technically capable people, but at no stage did they imagine that it wouldn\u2019t work.<\/p>\n

And yet this confidence is not translated to the work place.<\/p>\n

Many times I have heard the lament from companies that \u201ccloud is not for my business.\u201d They really are not comfortable with the idea of having their IT infrastructure sitting on some remote server somewhere, and yet many of these same businesses are happy to use cloud-based customer relationship management, routinely use Internet-based search engines and communicate with customers via a Facebook page. For these businesses I suspect cloud is already a matter of degree, not denial.<\/p>\n

So how do manufacturers weigh-up such decisions? Having been involved with three of our customers who recently went through the decision making process of moving their business operations to the cloud it became apparent that there is no simple answer or obvious choice.<\/p>\n

Cloud for more efficient upgrades<\/strong><\/p>\n

For one customer there was a need to upgrade both the company\u2019s ERP system as well as the ageing server on which it ran. If they made the decision to go the cloud route, future upgrades would be automatic, and there would be no need to invest in a more powerful server. However, there was a concern about loss of connectivity and slow connections, despite the fact that the business was already investing in a fast fibre broadband line. Their final decision was to go for an on-premise solution, primarily because the business\u2019s location caused poor signal strength.<\/p>\n

Cloud for geographically wide-spread sites<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another of our customers adopted cloud-based ERP due to the fact that they run their systems on different sites in different countries, and in different time zones. The primary problems with this were providing:<\/p>\n