Is Cloud ERP the Almighty Cost Cutter?

Deploying a viable, cost-effective enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution is not a sure thing. In projects gone wrong, a common timeline seems to involve rosy promises early on, with costs that skyrocket and launch dates that get pushed back. And other warning signs can simmer away like flagging executive sponsorship and lack of user adoption.

With Microsoft updating its plans to take its ERP solutions to its own Azure cloud platform, a maturing cloud option has the potential to smooth implementations and help provide solid ROI.  But is this ERP ambrosia, or just another "tastes like chicken" fiasco?

A Better Option?

According to a January 2^ndCIO article, ERP systems are often the most costly investment made by chief information officers (CIOs), but over half of these same CIOs describe their ERP deployments as "failures," either because they can't perform as advertised or cost too much to maintain. Clive Longbottom, a senior research analyst at Quocirca, argues that traditional ERP solutions are dying, and says the cloud is the harbinger of their death.

Simply put, the massive restructuring necessary to condense and remove old legacy systems means an on-premise ERP deployment will constantly encounter new challenges as software conflicts emerge and employees, unfamiliar with the new system, resist change. The result is often an over-budget, past-due mess; funneling these deployments through the cloud, and thereby skirting any need for integration with an existing system, could help streamline costs and download problems onto the provider instead of the user.

Some experts argue that the ERP market is still evolving and that the cloud, also in ...