Is It Now the Right Time to Migrate Enterprise Systems to the Cloud?

Background: From On-Premise To Cloud-Based Erp

ERP systems can be defined as an enterprise-wide information system package, which consists of a comprehensive set of software modules that aim to support and integrate all key business processes across various functional divisions (e.g. sales, production, purchasing, accounting, and human resource) of an organisation by using a single data repository (Peng & Nunes, 2012).

Conventionally, ERP systems are installed and hosted internally by user companies in their own servers (this is so called on-premise ERPs). This on-premise approach, which is still prevalently adopted by modern organisations to host and deploy their ERP systems, however has some inherent disadvantages (Mangiuc, 2011). In particular, an on-premise ERP will generally require user companies to invest substantial financial and human resources to purchase, install, maintain and improve the software package and related IT facilities (e.g. servers, hardware, and any necessary facilities to run it) (Mangiuc, 2011). When companies (especially large and multi-national companies) have a high number of ERP users, installing and constantly upgrading the software package on the PC of each user will be very costly and time consuming. These disadvantages embedded in on-premise ERPs are expected to be significantly improved with the support of cloud computing technologies.