Jury's still out on running core business applications in the cloud

23 Jan 2012

The concept of 'the cloud' has been hyped-up by the industry to such an extent that one would be hard-pressed to find a technology business without some level of cloud strategy. Yet, ITweb reports that Jane Thomson, MD of Softworx - a leading South African provider of business applications - said that, while 60% of local organisations have expressed interest in the cloud, the movement is still understandably cautious.

"As with any industry, the cloud is the ICT industries over-hyped buzzword that is used often, but is largely misunderstood," she said

"South African business has taken initial steps running non-mission-critical applications like back-office operations, human resources, talent management and sales force automation in the cloud," Thomson added. "The thinking is that, should the cloud fail under any circumstances, the core business of the organisation can still continue." Some of the major enterprise software providers are upping the ante when it comes to offering cloud-based applications: Infor, the world's third-largest Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) vendor, has been touted as leading the migration of core industry processes to the cloud. Infor has already gained a significant subscription base, and with the recent introduction of Infor10, customers have the choice of the type of deployment they prefer."

"Infor10 offers flexible deployment options," Thomson noted, "which I imagine will be an attractive selling point for South African customers." Using flexible deployment, customers may select how much of their system they wish to operate in the cloud. They can run their entire solution on Infor10 CloudSuite, or they can keep core enterprise systems on-premise, while running other applications or services in the cloud. "Whether customers access functionality in the cloud or in the more traditional licensing models, they get the same functionality and look-and-feel," explained Thomson, who told ITweb she predicts that "the uptake in South Africa based on recessionary challenges and strategic business decisions in 2012, will show increasing acceleration."

Read the full article on www.itweb.co.za.