What To Watch Out For In 2019 On ERP Market Trends

It’s true that we can never bid adieu to last year’s trend-setting technologies like blockchain, AI, IoT, and multi-cloud. But, neither can we not talk about the progress where technology is likely to echo around the ERP space.

According to a study by MarketWatch, “The ERP software market is expected to rise globally to $47B by 2022”. Let us find out what are the possible market trends in ERP for 2019.

Drastic Rise Of The IoT Market

According to Statista’s latest research, “the global IoT market will rise exponentially from $2.9 trillion in 2014 to over $7 trillion in 2020”.  This leads to a situation where  ERP systems will need a new level of intelligence and automation to make platforms collect data and insights.

Earlier, only a small percentage of data were created and processed outside a traditional data center. But in the future, there will be a situation where nearly all data will be generated from outside of the data center.

IoT is expected to drive the design and deployment of many operational analytics solutions. Industries such as retail, banking, and telecommunications will also adopt operational analytics to enhance customer experience and quality.

Related Reading: Get answers to where and why should you invest in IoT.

Accelerating Transition To Cloud Computing

According to Statista Reports, “the global market revenue of public cloud services will surpass 278.3 U.S. Dollars in 2021”.

The benefits of this would be greater data security, minimal dependency on hardware, speedy results, and high customer satisfaction. As per the research report by IDC, spending on cloud computing is anticipated to rise at a rate of six times the rate of the current IT spending through 2020 which upsurges at 4.5 times the IT spending rate since 2019.

Cloud concepts, Content Delivery Network (CDN), DevOps, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, are going to be the key players in the future of Cloud Computing.

Contribution Of AI And Emerging Disruptive Technologies

The three main trends behind the huge adoption of ERP services are the integration of artificial intelligence (AI), deployment in the cloud, and improved IoT technology.

Big data analytics and the various kinds of AI, including predictive analytics, machine learning, and deep learning, form the catalysts for industries to improve customer experience.

The third wave of technology evolution is based on systems of intelligence (Cloud, IoT, AI, VR, AR). For instance, Chatbots and messaging apps are examples for a rapid expansion in the implementation and adoption of AI.

By implementing advanced solutions such as AI-based chat-bots, IoT sensors and more, businesses will streamline and thereby accelerate their functions. This can tackle productivity issues and also it is an opportunity for businesses to realize the value and utility of new disruptive technologies.

Related Reading: Watch out for the top AI trends in 2019.

ERP and SaaS – Differences In Overheads

The traditional applications based on ERP were stored on servers. This meant overheads as a result of increased hardware costs as well as costs associated with backup, recovery, and maintenance. The difference between traditional and SaaS applications is that SaaS applications are stored on cloud-based servers.

The benefits of SaaS are that these applications do not demand high maintenance costs, or rather are they expensive. The additional overhead costs that are reduced when it comes to SaaS are that they differ in terms of per-seat licensing costs as well as the total cost of ownership etc.

So, since Saas is a cloud-based model, SaaS-based applications are neither costly, neither are they difficult to maintain.

ERP transition has taken place rapidly. The new SaaS model for ERP is very flexible and useful.

Inclusion Of Social Media Channels

ERP systems in 2019 will need to be able to include direct marketing and data links across multiple social media channels to make their presence felt in the market.

HR managers frequently use social media to search for and hire new employees and also as a background check and even as performance management indicators. These changing trends in business operations are reflected in any competitive ERP platform.

The modules that address are becoming social-media savvy in 2019. This is mainly due to the high use of customer base that accounts for 2.77 billion customers (according to eMarketer research).

The other engaging trends in ERP adoption are as follows:

• Focus on Business Intelligence

Organizations are trying to make forecasts with ERP software for business intelligence.

• Good Integration architecture

An increasing need for ERP software system has resulted in the act of ERP consultants being shifted towards a better integration architecture for ERP software.

• Two-Tier ERP

Two-tiered ERP is very useful for enterprises since they run in different processes at different places. These tend to match the needs of all locations with a better cost structure. It best suits when the enterprise is large.

• The Personalization Advantages

Today’s ERP systems are built for personalization. Some systems offer tools to help make it easy and fast in customizing the application to their needs.

• Large Organizations Acquiring Small Startups

Large organizations try acquiring smaller startups in that regards. This increases ERP implementation.

• Partnering With Firms That Break The Traditional Rules

With the onset of the cloud, the traditional role of technology partners will no longer be enough. Finding an ERP partner that utilizes the latest technology and analyzing how they deliver service with your needs is required for a successful business.

• More focus on profit from ERP

As ERP becomes more and more successful in the market, firms blindly implement them now. They are sensitive to the return of investment.

These above trends in ERP to be witnessed in 2019 are beneficial for an organization as well as provide to business growth. ERP software is used in various fields for work and that is the reason why the demand for an  ERP software system is increasing every day.

Related Reading: Check out these tips to get your business the best out of your ERP system.

Watch out for more market trends and highlights showcased for 2019 in our latest blogs!!

Also, empower your business with trending technologies. Contact our tech-experts today!

A Quick Guide on the Cloud Service Models – Saas, IaaS, Paas!

The future of computing is in the cloud. What it implies is that you adapt your business to fit in the cloud model. Missing out on it can leave your business behind, especially in today’s world, where technology is imperative and unavoidable.

Once you sign up for cloud service models Saas, IaaS, and Paas, you can leverage its wider possibilities to bring the flexibility and efficiency that pushes your business growth. An enterprise cloud platform like InfinCE can always help you seamlessly embrace the power of the cloud to streamline and run a business efficiently, within a secured environment. 

Over the years cloud services have witnessed exponential growth worldwide. The global public cloud services revenue in 2018 alone, is estimated to be over 305.8 billion dollars with 411.4 billion dollars growth projected in 2020.

This year, Gartner forecasted the worldwide public cloud services market to grow 6.3% by the end of 2020 to total $257.9 billion, up from $242.7 billion in 2019. Desktop as a service (DaaS) is also expected to have the most significant growth in the coming years, increasing 95.4% to $1.2 billion in 2020. Here’s a peek into the Worldwide Public Cloud Service Revenue Forecast Table put up in Millions of U.S. Dollars.

Fig.1: Worldwide Public Cloud Service Revenue Forecast (Millions of U.S. Dollars)

Fig 2. Global Forecast of Public Cloud Services Revenue, Source – Gartner

What these reports signify is a steady adoption of cloud services by businesses across the world to tackle the entire range of operations that they do. Application development in cloud computing provides an extensive, flexible, and affordable way to implement cloud service models. Meanwhile, numerous leading players in the information technology sector now compete to deliver flexible cloud services for both the public and enterprises.

Increasing competition means better delivery of services and innovations, which can deeply benefit scaling up your business. Hence, now is the right time to deploy a cloud model into your business infrastructure.

What’s Ahead?

• An Overview of Cloud Benefits
• Cloud Service Models Saas, IaaS, PaaS
• Adopting Cloud – Choosing Between SaaS, IaaS, and PaaS
• SaaS
• IaaS
• PaaS
• What Should You Know About DaaS?
• Cloud Service Models SaaS, IaaS, or PaaS: What Fits your Business?

Businesses, especially small businesses, these days are increasingly adopting cloud service technologies. Why?

It’s the flexibility, scalability and value features of the cloud that are apparently driving this growth in its adoption. The basic aim is to allow employees to work better and promote an efficient work environment, with their offices available everywhere, now that telecommuting is becoming more prevalent as a trend.

Here are some facts that prove how rapidly telecommuting is becoming mainstream:

• By 2020, cloud spending in terms of IT and services is likely to exceed half a trillion dollars.
• 70% of software revenues are based on cloud code – SaaS, PaaS or on-premise as ISV’s base on-premise on cloud platforms.
• Tweet: Almost 50% of large enterprises are looking to double up software and services development staff for cloud projects. 

But, as a general fact,

do all businesses stand to gain from using cloud services?
Will all businesses reap equal and extensive benefits from using the cloud?
Is it beneficial for you to use the cloud?

The answer to all these questions depends on the size of the business as well as preferences in terms of data, storage, security and the like.
Before you jump on the bandwagon, you need to analyse your business scenario and your preferences to make an intelligent decision.

Is cloud migration the right way to go for you?

Cloud migration (or moving your apps and services to the cloud), is more of a long term trend. While it may have several benefits of its own, there are several factors that you need to consider before going for it.

When should you consider moving to the cloud?

• If your applications are experiencing an explosive increase in traffic and it is practically difficult for you to scale and arrange resources on the fly, in order to meet the rising demand.
• If you are a software solutions provider and your clients are increasingly demanding faster application development and deployment, and you want to facilitate that while cutting down on infrastructure overheads.
• If your clients are looking to expand their business and diversify geographically and you think it might be a challenge for you to accommodate a multi-region infrastructure system, including its due maintenance, time and human resources.
• If you are looking to reduce your operational costs and increase the effectiveness of your IT.
• If you are looking to set up a disaster recovery system for an entire data center, while still having adequate control over resources and keeping costs under check.
• If you are planning to expand your development team and make it widely distributed so as to allow even remotely located employees to work easily.

These are just some common situations where you could consider cloud migration. There may be more. If you can relate to at least some these, then you can probably start planning.

Small and medium businesses are more likely to be experiencing one or more of the above scenarios. They are the ones who are constantly undergoing rapid and drastic changes in terms of scale, profits and business size. Hence, the obvious features of the cloud like scalability and accessibility can come in very useful.

Large enterprises may have more sustained developments in their business, in which case, they may not necessarily need the cloud. There are other options for them which we’ll be getting into, in a while.

The flipside

Now let’s see some possible consequences that follow cloud migration. You might want to consider the flip side of things as well, before getting into it.

• If your application uses, stores and sends back a lot of sensitive data, then you might not be able to use the cloud. Even compliance regulations restrict you from maintaining such data, in sources like the cloud.
• If you are using proprietary software or technology, and you are looking to move to the cloud, then you have a problem. It might not be legally possible for you to move or deploy such software into the cloud.
• You might have to deal with transparency and control issues, as your hardware is being controlled by someone else.
• You might encounter latency or dormancy issues with certain operations when using the cloud.
• If you want to retain ownership of certain data in your application, then cloud might not be the thing for you. When you migrate your data to the cloud, you have no control of where your data gets stored.
• Shared resources can lead to occasional disturbances in terms of performance and efficiency.
• Your application’s design or architecture might not be suitable as such to fit the cloud architecture. Hence you might need to make certain modifications.

Again, these are only some limitations of cloud migration to get you started on the thinking process. The most common ones are listed above. You may have to deal with other minor issues as and when you migrate.

To make a judgment…

On a normal case, where you already have a setup, which is satisfactory to your employees as well as customers, and you don’t really need much scaling and maintenance at the moment, then you could very well continue as such. It would not be worth these limitations for you to disturb the existing smooth process.

If you are a startup company in the manufacturing industry, it might not be feasible to maintain in-house servers and applications for internal uses. You also might not encounter a lot of the above-mentioned issues as you don’t use the cloud to serve customers directly. In such cases, opting for cloud services might be the best way to go.

For those of you who own large business enterprises in the software industry, it might be better to go for a hybrid model – one which combines the best of cloud services as well as in-house servers or private servers. For applications that involve a lot of sensitive data, or for proprietary software, you could use your own servers, and for other applications, you could use cloud services. That way, you don’t have to compromise on security or data ownership issues while at the same time, attain the flexibility and scalability of the cloud.
You also have the option of private clouds. More on that soon.

The cloud computing model

From a broad perspective, you could go for one out of three cloud computing models – Iaas (Infrastructure as a Service), SaaS (Software as a Service) and PaaS (Platform as a Service).

In case of IaaS models, you don’t have to take care of storage, networking, CDN and virtualization. They can all be left to the IaaS provider.

In PaaS, the application platform, the development, and the database are all handled by the providers.

SaaS models take care of business management, CRM, security as well as tools.
It is important to choose the model once you have decided to for the cloud.

The cloud options

Large enterprises also have the option of choosing a private or a hybrid cloud model.

Private cloud is where you can create your own cloud using specific platforms like Openstack. That way you can access the benefits of the cloud, while still retaining data security and ownership. It is apt for businesses using secure and confidential information and core systems.

A public cloud is where all of your resources are hosted by a separate cloud service provider. It supports more number of customers and is better suited for companies having lesser confidential information, as all the resources are publicly shared and virtualized.

A hybrid cloud model is one in which your resources are spread over private and public clouds. Specific resources can be used in the private cloud, whereas those which do not need a high level of security can be hosted by the public servers. Large software enterprises can benefit from using this model as they can have the best of both worlds. It is a perfect blend of reliability, availability, security and reduced operations costs.

It is extremely important for business enterprises, whether large, medium or small to analyze their business and choose the appropriate cloud solution. If your business scenario demands cloud migration, then your next steps should be in choosing the right model. Once you know exactly what kind of cloud services you need, you can be sure you are doing the right thing.
Still confused? Talk to our experts and find the perfect solution.