ERP Special technology report
effect of SaaS-based models will steadily gain prominence. “The momentum toward SaaS may start with mid-markets and certain geographic pockets,” he said, “but SaaS-based delivery models will soon be attractive even to large enterprises when they look for an alternative to large capital expenses.” Dinesh added that the existing work regime of systems integrators (SIs) will also change as they adopt and adapt to SaaS-based delivery and pricing models for on-boarding clients to the Cloud-based ERP products. “We can expect charge-out rates from SIs to be more along a per-user-per-month model with very minimal upfront costs,” he said.
'Middle office' Another area where Dinesh sees many innovative solutions developing concerns the access to these ERP products. “Users will demand access to be made more universal yet secure,” he said, “and hence we will see package vendors providing tablet-based and mobile device-based user interfaces for working with ERP products. This will make the whole world of ERPs inherently more attractive and move them out of the classic 'back office' application classification to a more trendy
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'middle office' labelling.” Dinesh added that the user interface will become simpler and the required number of end-user training hours will rapidly decrease. “All this will lead to better ERP adoption and usage across large and small enterprises,” he said.
Wahlers believes we are certainly heading for an increasingly centralised world through the adoption of concepts like the Cloud. “It feels like a major shift in the same way as it did when the trend moved from large mainframe computers to client server,” he said, “but things are definitely going in that direction.” Wahlers also makes the point that Apple has somewhat changed the game in terms of thinking about apps and their usability in the consumer world. And, he maintains, in the same way that apps are sometimes created in a somewhat speedy and reactionary way for the consumer market, then the enterprise world may also see certain types of business applications being written for similarly quick and easy deployment in the future. According to Perry, Microsoft will become more and more dominant with its Cloud- based office solutions, “and subsequently, with less software installed on your desktop,
the need for state-of-the-art or powerful desktop PCs and laptops is reduced,” he said, adding: “SaaS and Cloud are in effect a ‘war of attrition’ on the PC’s power base. This, coupled with the increasing introduction of thin client PCs and with the power-saving benefits that these devices have, will ultimately reduce the need for technical onsite support to maintain these devices.” Burgess commented that the ‘rebirth’ of getting closer to the customer and suppliers as part of a chain of collaboration will come increasingly to the fore in the near future. “Our recent IDC research has shown that in a bid to improve customer retention and reduce costs, collaboration may well be a strategy many businesses take – and they will want the technology to follow suit.” Wahlers concluded by saying: “Put simply, ERP has developed from being a transactional platform to an information platform. In the past ERP has been very good as a solid backbone, but with the addition of things such as business intelligence and the ability to make applications integrate better, ERP has become much more of an information provider.”
March 2011
MANUFACTURING &LOGISTICS
IT 19
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