The Reasons for Moving Your ERP to The Cloud

Over the past two decades, cloud computing has become the foundation for the delivery of mobile and content services as well as the best alternative to traditional on-premises data centers. And as business continues the transition to a digital-first economy, cloud computing (along with cybersecurity) continues to dominate planned IT expenditures for the foreseeable future. International Data Corporation forecasts worldwide spending on cloud services will surpass $1.3 trillion by 2025 with a compound annual growth rate of 16.9%.

So what is the attraction of the cloud to publishers? In this blog, we take a fresh look at this question.

Why Move to the Cloud

A move to the cloud is far from just a technology exercise and must be rooted in business outcomes – specific objectives the company wants to achieve. The main reasons to move to cloud computing are:

  • Scale and Network Capacity
  • Connectivity and Efficiency
  • Improved Security
  • Total Cost of Ownership
  • Innovation
  • Sustainability

Scale and Network Capacity

Cloud subscribers can “right-size” their computing capacity to that which is needed and can easily upgrade (or downsize) their network resource levels to what is required at the time. Scalability and resource consumption are therefore much more easily managed. Cloud computing can help eliminate the complexity and inefficiencies of managing multiple data centers in separate locations. Cloud providers are focused on ensuring very high levels of service availability and the degree of access speed that is demanded (and paid for) by the subscriber. Availability is often measured in downtime hours per year. The emphasis can now be on your publishing core competencies, and not on IT.

Connectivity & Efficiency

Individual users can connect no matter where they work, anytime, anywhere, using any device. That means no more risk of files being stored on an inaccessible computer. Employees situated in various locations can collaborate easily and by providing simultaneous syncing, and sharing of documents and records in real time, cloud computing helps increase the collaboration and efficiency of employee teams. In addition, the cloud helps businesses respond more quickly to changing business conditions, customer demands, and competitive pressures.

Improved Security

Possibly a weak link in the very early days of cloud computing, these concerns are no longer an issue. Most cloud platforms deliver the highest levels of security, data integrity and backup/recovery facilities because they make huge investments in physical resources and technology, along with a skilled team of IT experts and engineers that the typical publisher just cannot afford to build and maintain by themselves. There is a reduced risk of data loss and safer backup security offsite – decreasing the potential for hackers, viruses, ransomware, and other cybersecurity problems.

Total Cost of Ownership

Cloud-based IT not only offers scalable computing power, it can minimize many IT requirements – such as network management, routine maintenance, and physical data storage, delivering significant savings, and predictable budgets. Compare this to managing outdated servers and software on-premises with IT resources whose skills are typically not aligned with the core competencies of the business, and who are often less than critical mass in number, creating further risk.

Innovation

There are very significant opportunities provided by the cloud environment for innovation in new applications and enhanced operation of existing apps. This includes digitalization, analytics, automation, AI, and collaboration with external data sources and Big Data that are simply not easily available to smaller operations.

Sustainability

And finally, the economies of scale provided by the consolidation of a vast number of on-premises computer servers consuming electrical power and resources across the planet, into a small number of (larger) individual sites has a positive impact on sustainability and hardware end-of-life concerns. This is particularly so when one considers that the major cloud service providers (MS Azure, AWS, IBM, etc.) have been made acutely aware of their responsibilities and are building their data centers in cold climates, with renewable sources of power, with carbon reduction as a highly visible metric.

The Challenges of an On-Premise to Cloud Migration

Successful migrations begin with a defined strategy and careful coordination with your chosen cloud provider and retraining of all involved players in the business. Regardless, the majority of companies migrating to the cloud experience one or all of the following challenges:

Security

Service providers handle much of the security for a cloud application. The provider is typically responsible for securing the platform, network, applications, operating system, and physical infrastructure. However, providers are not responsible for securing customer data or user access to it. Control is increasingly shifting from IT to users, who can change file sharing settings, create their own groups, and install third-party apps, all of which can result in headline-worthy data breaches.

Cyber threats may be caused by malicious and accidental misconfigurations, hijacking of user accounts resulting from poor encryption, identity management, lack of process controls and data leakage from insecure APIs or other infrastructure endpoints.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of solely providing developers and data users with permissions to any cloud resource while ignoring the additional processes and procedures that are now necessary in the new environment at the end-user level. Gartner estimates that 95% of cloud security failures are the customer’s fault. To avoid security breaches, customers must implement improved security processes at the user level, possibly enhanced by tools and technologies.

Key dependencies

Resolve key infrastructure and application integration dependencies by prioritizing applications and identifying necessary remediations.

Business Support

Commitment from all departments across the business is essential for migration to succeed. Every stakeholder must be represented on the project team. This includes assessing the skills that are required in the organization, and filling the gaps where they don’t exist, either by tools and personnel provided temporarily by the Cloud Service Providers, or by adding to your own permanent staff where needed.

IT Support

The nature of the IT support group will clearly change with the removal of the equipment to a third-party’s remote site. This will cause procedural and process problems, at least initially if not permanently, as your IT group now no longer has the same degree of control over the infrastructure. Adjustments will need to be made to ensure the same degree of service to the user community.

Don’t Go It Alone

If your publishing company is facing an on-premise to cloud migration, the most important thing is to ensure you have the expertise you need to make the project successful. knk has 35 years of experience in publishing software and has helped hundreds of publishers around the world update their systems to the cloud. Contact us today to learn how we can bring your operations into the latest Microsoft Azure cloud technology.

 

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