More and more businesses that have traditionally relied on Infor implementations maintained on-premises are moving to cloud support instead. What differences are making the difference between Infor On Prem and Cloud solutions?
Migrating to cloud has been common for a few years now, but the number of businesses making the move each year has skyrocketed since the onset of covid. I think there are three main reasons this has accelerated the decision to migrate:
·Coming to rely on other cloud solutions teaches the client that cloud is viable – and comparatively cheap!
·Work from home means businesses now have many more ‘sites’ than before. On site solutions can seem like a thing of the past.
·Some businesses think that with remote working, there’s no longer a need to pay for underused, overpriced office space. At that point, do you store your server in your Head of IT’s garage, or do you go to the cloud?
I’m aware there’s a huge debate going at the moment between ‘the office is dead’ and ‘work from home must stop’ and it’s not a topic I have time to get into here, but new methods of working are being developed, and most are better supported by cloud solutions.
Infor themselves point out a number of other benefits to going to the cloud, though – and you may not have thought about all of them.
Scaling On Cloud is Easier than Scaling On Prem
The issue that gets the most discussion is probably scaling. On prem, you’ll have to manually configure scalability for each workload. Because you need to include safety margins, this usually results in oversizing. On cloud, you can make use of auto-scaling functionality. Combine that with the ‘elastic architecture’ of the cloud and you don’t have to worry about performance issues at peak times.
You also won’t be paying for hardware you’re underutilizing outside of peak times, either.
Resiliency and the Cloud
When cloud computing first started to be discussed, the big concern everyone had was that something would happen to it; that it would go down at the wrong time, that your data might be lost.
(These are already things that can happen with an on-premises system, of course, which is why we have backup protocols and monitoring systems set up to alert us if there’s a problem.)
As time has gone on, we’ve seen cloud services prove they’re actually more resilient – backups are built in and trigger automatically, rather than needing a manual failover process.
If the problem is caused by a software issue, it’s much faster to get that updated on the cloud, too.
Cloud Compliance
One last major point; Infor’s cloud server facilities are designed and maintained to stand up to the most rigorous compliance standards their clients need. Rather than maintaining your own facilities, transitioning to the cloud can take that burden off your shoulders.
With so many businesses looking to migrate, the candidate pool is a fast-changing one. To find the best available people for your project, give me a call – I’ll be more than happy to help.
