How the cloud is going to reinvent ERP – and how long it will take

August 1, 2013 Off By David

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Colin Barker.

Over the past 30 years, enterprise resource planning (ERP) has become the mainstay application of most companies. These systems sit on mainframes or servers, fussed over by a select bunch of IT people, cosseted and quietly churning through the vital work of keeping the company going. Whether it is supplying all the right information on a just-in-time basis, keeping close control of inventory or just printing out employee time-sheets, the ERP system will be the ultimate controlling mechanism.

The software used always needs to be state of the art and is often so expensive that it can turn CEO’s hair white overnight if it has so much as a glitch: in short, ERP is both mundane and absolutely crucial to any production company’s success…

But is it time to call time on ERP? Many CIOs are eyeing these expensive systems and wondering whether ERP can be moved out into the cloud. "The cloud will completely disrupt the ERP market," Gartner analyst Nigel Rayner told ZDNet. The world is moving to the cloud, he said, and it will be the most important factor in the development of ERP over the next 10 years or more…

Read more from the source @ http://www.zdnet.com/how-the-cloud-is-going-to-reinvent-erp-and-how-long-it-will-take-7000018720/