Manufacturing, ERP, EAM: All About Cloud Software [Roundup]

Cloud software applications have made plenty of inroads within the IT structure of many organizations in the past few years. In this week's round-up, we take a look at some of the recent developments and data around Cloud adoptions, and the benefits industrial companies are reaping.

Four Benefits of Cloud Software to IT and OT Organizations

Cloud manufacturing software implementations have steadily picked up speed over the past couple of years, bolstered by advancements in data security and improvements in connectivity that formed some of the biggest hurdles manufacturing organizations had to overcome to seriously consider it. In large part, it's due to these four unignorable benefits that Software as a Service (SaaS) provides over on-premise solutions:

1.) Lower the Cost of Ownership: Cloud implementations lack the daunting up-front capital and time investments inextricable from on-premise solutions. Additionally, Cloud deployments don't require continual oversight by dedicated in-house IT or upgrade fees that hide the true cost of on-premise.

2.) Free Up IT Organizations from Server Maintenance and Software Updates: For an SMB, this may be critical, as many SMBs have very limited IT resources to begin with, and can be allocated toward more business critical projects.

3.) Speed Time to Implement: This is perhaps the most obvious one. Depending on the software and extent of roll-out, an on-premise implementation may take many months before it's up, running, and providing its intended value.

4.) Enable Perfrmance on Mobile Devices and Foster Collaboraton: The ease of communicating via the Internet is one of the key user experience benefits of the Cloud, as more and more employees are using tablets and smart phones to manage day-to-day tasks. This flexibility also renders Cloud software as a model that's easily scalable acros the facility, business unit, or enterprise as well. More from the original post...

The Cloud Is on the Rise in Manufacturing

And indeed, data and anecdotal evidence from conversations,conferences, and events is supporting the fact that manufacturers have begun to overcome their Cloud qualms over security and connectivity and Cloud offerings have greatly improved over the past few years as vendors have begun to guarantee physical server locations and explain data management and storage possibilities in detail. Many smaller software vendors are now also partnering with larger and more experienced Cloud infrastructure providers to take care of this concern and make their solutions more viable as well. In terms of the hesitancy steeped in manufacturing's conservative culture and resitance to change, the last few years have seen numerous large manufacturers begin deploying Cloud solutions within their enterprises. Full blog post...

Cloud-Based Manufacturing Applications: Where we Are, Where We're Going

The Cloud doesn't have to just mean complete surrender of your data to third-party hands, either. Software as a Service (SaaS) sometimes receives the most play in the media because it's the biggest departure from the old order of completely on-premise software hosting. However, Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Technology as a Service (TaaS) are two models that retain some level of ownership of either data or control. PaaS allows the end-user to create a software solution using tools or libraries from the plaform service provider. TaaS is an operational model that effectively runs an IT organization from within an enterprise as an internal service provider, and is built off of the technology models of SaaS and PaaS. What works best for your company is highly dependent on your individual circumstances but it goes to show the flexibility currently available if considering a move or even testing the waters in cloud functionality. Full blog post here...

The Cloud for Enterprise Asset Management

It's also important to remember that while "Cloud" has evolved in technology, the concept is nothing new. As Dan Miklovic points out in this post, there are companies that have been strictly Cloud providers for 20 years now, and the terminology has shifted from "time-sharing" to "hosted" to "SaaS" to "Cloud."  And while much of our discussion of the Cloud here at LNS (and in the marketplace) has centered on the manufacturing operations specific version of Cloud, there is ample opportunity popping up in te Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) space. 

One of the reasons Cloud has been slow to take off in the EAM space is because Cloud has much of the roots of its growth in the SMB space, and by definition, most very asset intensive companies are large companies to begin with. These are companies that typically have big IT organizations that can support on-premise EAM software. However, as Dan says, this may be changing, as the growth and change in the EAM space is resembling very closely what happened in the ERP space, where Cloud has realy begun to take off. What will Cloud end up looking like for EAM? And who will lead the way in the space? More at this post...