The business cloud, demystifiedData ownership issues, scalability and the benefit of the hybrid cloud - three of the foggiest aspects of doing business in the cloud are clarified by Laurent Dedenis, president of international operations at Acumatica... Dedenis spoke at One Channel's conference on the mobile and cloud revolution 2015 last week. I caught up with him to get answers to some of the most pressing questions about cloud computing at the moment.
Laurent Dedenis Dedenis: Complete control and freedom of choice on which cloud vendor as well as which cloud to go with - public, private or hybrid cloud (more on these in my answer to question 4 below) - is key to maintaining data sovereignty and ownership of data. Only with these criteria in place can users be assured that they can reap the full benefits of cloud, which is scalability and unlimited migrations should their business needs change. In the case of Acumatica, data always remains the property of the customer.
Dedenis: Every business is different and so cloud requirements will vary, but there is always the right cloud deployment for every company. When it comes to reaping the benefits of cloud-based ERP and big data storage, the requirements stated above of flexibility of deployment in any cloud and with any vendor of choice is critical to ensuring a cloud ERP that is future-proof. Businesses are building and procuring for the future, not just for today's requirements. That's the key challenge in changing mindsets.
Dedenis: On a true cloud platform that enables users to reap the benefits of cloud, you'll have a consumption- or utility-based pricing model. That is the true promise of cloud - the opportunity to scale to unlimited users in the organisation. This is possible at minimal or controlled cost if the cloud ERP vendor deploys a cloud-based utility or consumption model, where users only pay for what they are using. This is a game changer for many medium-sized organisations, as the traditional ERP vendors usually price per user or on 'group number of users' type licensing. The best part is the ability to involve everyone, on any device, anywhere. © Everythingpossible – 123RF.com
Dedenis: Public cloud refers to a set of pooled server resources with multiple tenants sharing for compute or applications hosted in a third-party vendors' data centres. Think of it as a block of apartments, where multiple tenants can occupy the block; however each tenant has a unique key and can only access their own authorised apartment. Examples of such vendors include Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Rackspace or IBM-Softlayer. There are also a variety of local vendors who provide such offerings. Public cloud is an entirely safe, secure choice of hosting as reputable vendors deploy stringent global standards to ensure data security, data sovereignty and even redundancy or fail-overs in case of natural disasters or power outages. Often these are more secure than organisations hosting their own servers due to increased chances of human error or physical disasters on the premises that the servers occupy. |