Wednesday, January 8, 2014

-- The Future of Enterprise Applications --


Like any other technology "Enterprise Applications" surged from a need, initially companies were trying to resolve very specific problems.  Initially there were MRP. (Material Requirement Planning) systems (1970) that intended to aid in accomplish tasks such as schedule production. Later on that need evolved in good part because companies saw the capabilities of the technology and how it turned over time more efficient and more cost effective, the second wave of enterprise systems is constituted by what is call MRP. II  (Manufacturing Resource Planning) Systems (1980), these application not only focused exclusively in production data, but exploded the relationships with Marketing and Finance data between others. Later in 1990 these systems evolved once more into what is noways called ERP. or Enterprise Resource Planning.

As you can imagine by the word Enterprise the idea behind is to integrate in an orchestrated way all business functions with the goal of improving operations, some key features that characterize these applications are.
  • Global Scale.
  • Focus in Collaboration and Product Strategy.
  • Based on a particular business model.
  • Aims to adapt and correct based on the markets conditions.
  • Leverage business intelligence  and analytic techniques.
  • Integrated Information Exchange.

So what is next in the ERP arena?. Well to start with we are in the era of mobility (access your data any time any where from any device).  Mobility will not only add  convenience to Enterprise Systems but also will add a new level of real time data. But what do we need for that to happen, well there is an implicit cost in all these systems, so how do you manage this cost?.

The answer is to use SAS. (Software as a Service) which is usually stored in the cloud where you pay a fraction of the cost or (pay per use). So why this has not taken off?

Below are some of the few reasons:

  •    Hesitant due to security.     
  •    Technology not being totally there.       
  •    Scalability.      
  •     Interdependence, could  not exist without supporting range of other services.

What can you do to mitigate the risks

  •  You need to build fault tolerance infrastructure or hire a third party vendor that offers this.
  •  You need to plan for it instead of stay away from it..


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