| |December 20168CIOReviewERPHeads Towards Cloud By Santosh Kotnis, EVP & CEO, Futurism Technologieshen it comes to emerging technologies, one phrase that has drawn more controversy than others have is cloud computing. Two words, which have driven countless debates, caused numerous arguments in IT departments and, more often than we would care to admit, have left many in the industry deeply confused.Similar technology transformation is happening in ERP space as well. The cloud is making on-premises ERP implementations an endangered species. This is a big change from just a few years ago, when cloud ERP was met with skepticism, particularly among large companies with big investments in on-premises systems. Attitudes have changed as IT and business management have come to understand the cloud's capabilities and value proposition.Cloud-based ERP platforms rely on hosted internet services, rather than an on-premises networked server infrastructure, to deploy core enterprise systems such as financial applications, human resources (HR) tools and supply chain management (SCM) software. The original advantages of cloud ERP were faster deployments, immediate enterprise-wide availability of the latest versions of applications, less need for on-site support and simpler pricing. Later systems featured greater ease of use, mobile-enablement of applications and easier integration with outside data sources. Today, the most up-to-date cloud-based ERP systems have internet of things (IoT) and machine learning capabilities.With cloud-based ERP offering so many pluses, why even consider an on-premises option? Even market leaders SAP and Oracle admit that few companies are deploying new on-premises ERP systems. Research firm Gartner predicts that the cloud will become the default option for software deployment by 2020. The writing is on the wall: Cloud will rule, and on-premises ERP is heading for legacy status.Change in Attitude towards CloudTwo barriers to cloud ERP adoption had been security concerns and resistance to change among IT leaders. The latter is understandable, considering the investment made in the software, training and support infrastructure of on-site systems, not to mention the risk associated with replacing any core business system. The security concerns were tied to the belief that remotely hosted systems WWith cloud-based ERP, the latest security updates are always deployed, and it's easier to maintain the integration points to keep up with security for apps outside the core systemSantosh is an ingenious professional with 18 years of IT & business management experience that involves strategic planning, operations, financial, project, HR and personnel management with complete P/L responsibility for the business units and organizations. At present, he spearheads the India operations of Futurism Technologies as EVP & CEO (Global Infrastructure Management Services & Cloud Solutions).IN MY OPINION
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