While the space race to the cloud continues, many organizations are not ready to rip and replace their existing on-premise Oracle ERP systems and launch into a new SaaS software implementation (See our recent blog Are You Ready for Cloud ERP?). Yet, the FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) on the ‘cloud promise’ is compelling:
- Eliminate capital costs by tearing down your data center,
- Increase agility with an elastic environment that can scale up and down on demand, and
- Reallocate infrastructure resources to higher value-added tasks.
As real clouds are grey, so is the definition of cloud computing. As such, SaaS is not the only rocket ship to the cloud. A less intrusive approach is to re-platform (a.k.a. ‘lift and shift’) your existing JD Edwards and E-Business Suite (EBS) software to the infrastructure cloud layer (a.k.a. Infrastructure as a Service – IaaS). Much like a data center move, you are simply moving your ERP application from your data center to the data center in the cloud.
This approach is a significantly faster and less expensive trajectory to the ‘cloud promise’. Why does this approach make sense for organizations that are not SaaS ready?
- No need to re-implement as you are just moving your existing software implementation to a new infrastructure platform.
- No user impact as users will be using the same software with the same user experience.
- No loss of functionality again because the software is not changing.
- No need to re-license because you already own the software.
SaaS purists will argue that companies using this approach will miss out on the sexy SaaS features (e.g., modern UI, mobile and social). True, but the re-platforming benefits are similar and the time and cost are significantly less. And, it does not preclude you from a future SaaS implementation (When You Are Ready).