What is Cloud ERP
Cloud ERP is a type of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software that is hosted on a cloud computing platform, rather than on-premise within a company’s own datacentre.
Being famous for its pay-per-use nature, hardware independence, flexibility and scalability, Cloud ERP has been the new investment focus of all top three ERP providers – Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle. One of the latest products in the Cloud ERP ecosystem is Microsoft’s Dynamics 365, which has helped Microsoft to bypass Oracle and became number two in ERP market share rankings.
Misconception of Cloud ERP Security
The number of adopters for Cloud ERP system has increased rapidly for the past half a decade and is expected to hit USD 29.84 billion of global market share by 2021. However, many enterprises remain skeptical about the concept, with one of the most common rejection statements that business developers encounter being “we would not want to have our finance information to be hosted outside of the company’s premise for security reasons”.
In addition, many believe that managing system security is a specialists’ work and will cost a lot of money to implement. For that reason, most small and mid-sized businesses prefer the traditional deployment mode of an ERP system.
Such misconception among others, are hindering the true advantages of Financial Management, Supply Chain Management, and Sales Process Management on the Cloud.
Leading Security Advantages of Cloud ERP
On the contrary to the skeptical perception, most Cloud ERP vendors boast world class security systems where crucial data protection can be assured. A survey from RapidScale resulted in 94 percent of businesses saw an improvement in security after switching to the cloud.
Microsoft Azure, the cloud hosting platform of Microsoft’s ERP systems, is highly secure with data encryption, in both transit and on Azure. Microsoft Azure is also ISO 27001:2013, 27018, HIPAA, DPA certified. For the local Singapore market, the technology empire has also fulfilled the MAS’s compliance checklist for Cloud Hosted Applications.
Software updates are also done more effectively on the Cloud, which avoid system’s security vulnerabilities in the event of delays in installing updates. No one can forget the WannaCry incident in 2017 where a large number of machines were affected with Ransomware mainly because of lack of patch updates.
The Cloud ERP provider should provide different options for making software updates easier. For instance, i-Net Dynamics’s both software and IT infrastructure domain knowledge as well as experience enable customers to take advantage of the seamless operating system updates and security patching in the background.
All-in-all, using a Cloud ERP is beneficial in many ways for a business. While the most relevant one being the security advantages and reduced cost, there are many other ways in which this system proves beneficial to the companies. For more information on Microsoft Cloud ERP and its benefits, please contact i-Net Dynamics for a free consultation today!
