All 4 entries tagged Cloud

ERP system and Internet of Things

In recent years, many ERP systems have competed each other by trying to provide the best solution for improving the business. After introducing cloud-based platform i.e. SAP HANA, Oracle ERP Cloud, Microsoft Dynamic cloud ERP and so on, they tried to seek for other new technologies to support the organisation. However, this article will only focus on SAP solution. While the user of internet has dramatically grown every year, and devices has become more and more intelligent. From SAP’s research, they found that the number of connected devices through the internet would be more than fifty billion by 2020. They expected that many physical objects would be able to communicate via the internet. The internet of things (IoT) can be defined as the integration of several technologies such as RFID, sensor, actuators, and wireless network (Atzori, Iera and Morabito, 2010).

 As last few year ago, SAP introduced an additional solution (IoT connector solution) which can use to connect sensor-based data with SAP HANA platform. This solution will combine data from automation devices and smart devices to perform a better retrospective and predictive analysis. Moreover, there are several benefits that the organisation can gain from these technologies solution.

• Improve efficiency, sustainability, quality, and safety
• Increase decision-making performance
• Improve decentralised data consistency
• Reduce operation cost
• Simplify software integration

Although, this solution may not be suitable for every business, there are some businesses can use it to improve their processes such as manufacturing, supply chain integrity, energy, health service and so on. But, they still have some major technical issues that require to consider. For example, Internet scalability, identification and addressing of the network, heterogeneity technologies (Haller, Karnouskos and Schroth, 2008).

Atzori, L., Iera, A. and Morabito, G. (2010). The Internet of Things: A survey. Computer Networks, 54(15), pp.2787-2805.

Haller, S., Karnouskos, S. and Schroth, C. (2008). The Internet of Things in an Enterprise Context. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pp.14-28.

SAP. (2016). IoT Platform | Internet of Things Applications | SAP HANA. [online] Available at: http://go.sap.com/product/technology-platform/iot-platform-cloud.html.

Chompassorn Pholtanasak (1465063)

: 28 Mar 2016 15:08 |  Tags: Cloud Erp Erp Systems Integration |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Disadvantages of cloud–based ERP vs. on–premise

Summary of disadvantages of cloud-based vs on-premise ERP systems,

• Subscription expenses (Periodic vs Capital expenditure)
• Security risks
• Performance risks
• Customization and integration limitations
• Strategic risks (high dependancy on service provider)
• Compliance risks
• Loss of IT competencies
• Functionality limitations (Relatively new system)
• Limitation on hybrid deployment strategy (retaining legacy systems and integration with on-premise solutions)
• Service Level Agreement (SLA) issues

Reference: Duan, Jiaqi, et al. "Benefits and drawbacks of cloud-based versus traditional ERP systems." Advanced Resource Planning(2012).

: 20 Apr 2015 01:38 |  Tags: Cloud Disadvantages Erp |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Vendors perspective on a Cloud–based ERP

Several vendors are endorsing that their Cloud based ERP is the best option to be purseud; thus introducing their own version of terminologies and gathering requirements which eventually dispute with the true cloud based ERP.

1>MULTIPLE TENANCY:

From the vendors perspective in order to qualify for a cloud application, multiple useers are requuired must utlise the same software application. This is, however, can be productive in terms of future cost of upgrades and product updates through running similar infastructure.

Furthermore, multi tenancy occur at infrastructure level, platform levels and application levels. Optioning for multi-tenant infastructure and multi-tenant platform can be a trade off between achieving cost and flexibility. Depending on the company demand Multi-tenancy makes sense to option for application level only if the cost of software is low. Whereas, flexibility comes secondary.

2>INERNAL CLOUDS:

Also depending on the size of an organisation cloud server can be hosted internally. However, it can be argue that no matter the size of the company is, still difficult to hold the the cloud internally. Further limitation being company only consist of signle server making it impossible to add more capacity will be a major drawback.

3>PERSONAL HOSTING SERVER VS CLOUD:

The amount of data a company produces and hosted on personal server is a kind of an outsourcing its ERP operations. But if the company grows its operation adding more data, it is certainly make sense to host it on an external cloud because of capacity limitation. But major question of concerning whether the intellectual (data) is protected properly.

Article by; Noor Butt - 1466360

Reference: (Acumatica, 2015) Cloud Base ERP from vendors perspective

: 04 Apr 2015 21:14 |  Tags: Cloud Confrontational Erp Resolving |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Benefits of using ERP solutions as cloud–based services

An ERP cloud is also known as enterprise resource planning using cloud computing which is one of the major ways a new business that provides an approach as Software as a Service, which can ensure continued growth and increasing profits as time goes on. This unique way of organising a business focuses on a modular, consistent management of information across an entire organisation or business.

Many new entrepreneurs form their first business around their area of expertise, and may in fact be highly skilled within that area, but may also be unprepared for day to day management of growing business. Such an entrepreneur may find that as their business increases in size, inconsistencies can pile up as well.

The number one reason why such inconsistencies may happen is that as a business grows, a number of different software may be used in order to manage various areas on information within a business, for example, such as finance, human resources, various supply chain management tasks, as well as payroll and fixed asset and cash management.

Such multiple kinds of software can make it very challenging for a growing business to manage some very technical administrative reasons. In fact, many newer owners make the mistake of continually patching up issues as they crop up, hiring various experts and buying newer and newer types of software.

It is precisely for this kind of a situation that enterprise resource planning was designed to handle. Originally a software process developed for the biggest of international conglomerates, this type of software has been in recent years geared and rebuilt with smaller and growing businesses in mind, in order to be available and useful to many new clients.

In fact, as such businesses may not have the space or large sums of money to pay upfront for an entire retooling of their existing information management systems. For that reason, this type of enterprise resource planning software is also designed to work in a special and growing way of storing management via an ERP cloud.

The advantage of this particular type of computing is that it does not require retooling of the client’s physical systems at all because the data required is stored centrally at a dedicated server that does not need to be hosted in the building where the target business is located at all. In fact, with this type of computing, the client business may only need to have a dedicated internet line.

Since this type of computing means that data is stored in one location and not in the business of the client at all, convenience is at a premium as this type of computing is particularly well suited for the business owner who may not have much technological expertise, as well as not much of a budget to hire such experts or to retool the way the business’s own hardware. Furtermore, in this approach all software might be availale as on-demand concept and there is a flexible schemes of payments for this model.

Example of on-demand service architecture

When it comes to running a growing business, ERP cloud may be more of a necessity than a luxury. A growing business has specific needs if it is to remain profitable and remain successful.

Nikita Korchin : 21 Mar 2012 14:52 |  Tags: Cloud Computing Erp |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem