Cloud computing has been the enabler and driver of digital transformation, and a game-changer at an enterprise level in the past decade. Almost all businesses today use one or more forms of cloud technology.
After years of slow uptake, controversy and debate, cloud technology has become an integral part of most organisation’s IT infrastructure design and is finally taking centre stage to transform core business models and processes on a larger scale and faster than ever before.
Cloud First: ASP to SaaS
Organisations started to see the value of a ‘cloud first’ strategy and the implementation of a SaaS (cloud-based software as a service) business platform as opposed to the outdated and disconnected ASP (Application Service Provider) model reliant on on-premises infrastructure.
Cloud adoption intensified with the growing focus on customer interaction, e-commerce, and new mobile and touch-enabled technologies, all which required rapid innovations, flexible systems and data centers, and surging transactional processing power.
The ASP experience moved to the cloud environment to address specific business requirements that needed massive innovation and mobility functionality due to a shifting marketplace. Email, storage, and customer-centric processes (CRM) were the first to move to the cloud.
But while non-ERP business processes embraced the cloud benefits, the core of the enterprise, the ERP and other such related management systems – warehouse, operations, financials, still relied on the on-premises functionality and data centres.
The same scenario applied to the back-office processes and database functionality on which business computing is based upon for day-to-day operations.
As a result, most business processes were still reliant on the on-premise infrastructure and ERP systems, rendering a rigid, complex, and time-consuming experience.
It is no longer the case, as market demands and technology advancements have rendered the move to cloud-based ERP processes necessary for organisations.
ERP and the Intelligent Cloud
Today, the need for enterprise flexibility and agility in business processes is the key driver of the major shift towards hybrid cloud models and transformative cloud-based ERP functionality.
Organisations can adapt and react to change faster by setting their core processes firmly in the cloud, and taking advantage of a flexible and scalable infrastructure as needed.
A new era in cloud computing makes it possible to innovate, develop value, increase the speed of business and time to market through the use of multi-cloud infrastructure, business intelligence (BI) tools, integrated analytics and machine learning technologies – all aspects typically associated with digital transformation.
The next stage in cloud computing is gearing fast towards major scaled-up implementation and the adoption of hyper clouds with enormous processing power and big data analytics capabilities for enterprises.
These developments combine with a stronger than ever focus on productivity and unified intelligent business processes to drive massive changes in the way daily operations are performed inside organisations.
Ultimately, the cloud-based ERP interface is evolving in an intelligent ecosystem capable of leveraging a full range of services, development tools, devices, and platform technologies.
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