| | July 20159CIOReviewof the cloud continues to be a challenge, particularly for complex, multi-tier applications like ERP solutions. Selecting a cloud provider that wraps infrastructure with application services and other managed services for storage, security or networking simplifies cloud management.ERP solutions seem to crave for private cloud; data is sensitive, workload needs to comply with legislative or regulatory guidelines. In these cases, a public cloud may not be the best choice. Until now, most private clouds have been expensive to buy, time-consuming to set up and manage. The cost of private clouds, often negates the promised value of cloud and the difficulty of managing and maintaining a private cloud has also limited this as an option. Today, however, certain cloud providers offer a private cloud residing in the client datacenter or can be located off premises with the cloud provider. This model combines the on-demand, consumption model of public cloud with the security and control of private cloud.Together public and private cloud offers a powerful hybrid solution that spans three considerations for moving ERP and other production applications to the cloud. First, IT can use public cloud to develop and test new functionality, QA, and pre-production, and then move the changes to a private cloud for production. Second, private clouds can be backed-up to an off premises public cloud. Finally, depending on the business continuity requirements, recovery scenarios can leverage a hybrid cloud configuration.One final consideration­choose a provider who is certified by your ERP provider. This will allow you to move licenses to the target cloud and ensure that the ERP provider has certified both the datacenter and the cloud platform. For example, SAP certifies cloud datacenters and platforms for running SAP HANA. With applications like SAP, certifications are essential because they ensure that software support continues uninterrupted. What Does Success Look Like? Here's an example. A manufacturing company with five global branches struggled with network legacy problems accessing data and applications stored in its South African data center. By moving to the cloud, the company sought to centralize IT, including ERP systems. Today each branch has a single server that provides local authentication for all data accessed via the cloud. The company immediately realized high availability, scalability, greater cost efficiencies, and more value from their ERP investment. Similarly, another global manufacturer faced with rapidly expanding operations made the decision to move to the cloud. For them, the time and capital expense of deploying a new set of systems for each expansion was crippling their ability to grow. By moving to a cloud environment they removed this obstacle completely, allowing them to quickly get new facilities online with the critical ERP functionalities without any additional capital expense. Together public and private cloud offers a powerful hybrid solution that spans three considerations for moving ERP and other production applications to the cloud
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