The Hybrid Cloud

Even though enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems have become crucial to the ability of many businesses to succeed over the past decade, the amalgamation of ERP and the cloud still remains in the minority, despite the benefits the cloud offers. While businesses may always want to control certain types of data in house, behind their own security measures, more and more businesses in the industry now suggest that ERP solutions are a prime area where hybrid cloud solutions can provide the perfect middle ground.

The issue at hand for many companies is that ERP systems still carry a large upfront investment, are complex to install and implement and then require significant IT resources and infrastructure once the solution is up and running. For a large amount of small and midsize businesses, these drawbacks mean that if they were to embark on an ERP implementation project to gain the advantages a powerful ERP system can bring their businesses, they risk overwhelming their IT departments.

The benefits cloud ERP offers can help ease a significant number of the issues midsize businesses may be having with older or more traditional on-premise ERP solutions, but for some companies, that is not a viable solution. Some businesses may not be willing to trust certain types of financial accounting information to a third party, despite the security advances cloud providers have made. Some IT managers may be reluctant to abandon an existing ERP system and infrastructure that has been tailored to suit the needs of the particular business, which is why many companies are turning to the cloud.

The cloud can be used for resource-heavy aspects of the ERP systems, such as transaction management, while the remainder of the solution can continue to run on the secure, in-house infrastructure. This system of deployment can move up to 80% of ERP implementation and resource time onto a cloud based server.

More and more, the cloud is becoming the standard infrastructure method for many IT solutions, however that does not mean that cloud based solutions are always the answer to every situation or businesses. For every company that is able to find ERP success through the flexibility offered by the cloud, there is another that requires a large section of their data on-premise.

One of the best benefits of the cloud is that it does not have to be an all-or-nothing solution. IT managers should investigate their existing on-premises solutions — ones that they simply cannot migrate to the cloud — and consider if having a cloud provider do some of the heavy lifting would relieve pressure on the infrastructure and IT department. In many cases, this kind of hybrid cloud computing solution would be a perfect fit.

The Hybrid Cloud