New Research Discusses Delivery and Security of Cloud-Based Enterprise Software Applications

New Research Discusses Delivery and Security of Cloud-Based Enterprise Software Applications
Paper Provides Guidance for Organizations Seeking Cloud Solutions and Services; Examines Consona’s Cloud-Based CRM and ERP Options INDIANAPOLIS (Vocus/PRWEB) February 08, 2011 Consona Corporation (Consona), a worldwide leader in providing customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and services for companies of all sizes, today announced the …

Acumatica Outpaces Competitors by Adding 100 Partners to Develop and Sell Cloud ERP Software in 2010

Acumatica Outpaces Competitors by Adding 100 Partners to Develop and Sell Cloud ERP Software in 2010
Acumatica, a provider of Cloud ERP software, today announced the addition of 100 channel resellers in 2010. The company’s investment in channel partners enables the rapid deployment of Cloud ERP into several mid-sized business verticals through customization and integration with both on-premise and SaaS systems.

Read more on Business Wire via Yahoo! Finance

Plex Online Cloud ERP now integrates with Salesforce.com

We normally do not publish press releases directly, but this is an exciting announcement. It is a step in the right direction, however, according to the article, it is only the Lead Management system that is integrated. We would have liked to have seen the whole Sales Force Automation process linked over to Plex, including Opportunity Management, but this is a good start.

Plex Online Cloud ERP Offers Customers Expanded Integration

Plex Systems partners with Revolution Group to offer seamless ERP, CRM

AUBURN HILLS, Mich., Jan. 4, 2011 — Plex Systems, Inc., provider of the No. 1 rated manufacturing ERP software, today announced additional functionality options for its Plex Online customers who use Salesforce.com.

With a range of ERP features in its comprehensive system, Plex Online is already one of the top SaaS / cloud computing manufacturing solutions. Manufacturers that use bothSalesforce.com and Plex Online in their business operations will benefit from the seamless integration of the two applications.

Together with implementation partner Revolution Group, Plex Systems researched how Plex Online and Salesforce.com could interface and created a fully cloud-based integration of the lead management process.

“Plex Online provides a complete suite of CRM tools for managing the total sales process, from powerful quote tracking and order entry modules, to release accounting and shipment tracking, to revenue reporting,” noted Patrick Fetterman, Plex Systems vice president. “Yet, for customers that must keep their Salesforce.com deployment, Plex Online will now be able to integrate with it. Teaming with Revolution Group, the integration with Salesforce.com is an opportunity to provide manufacturers with even more functionality.”

Launched as one of the original cloud computing companies in 1999, Salesforce.com reported annual earnings exceeded $1.3b in the fiscal year ending on January 31, 2010. Based on Salesforce.com’s real-time, multitenant architecture, the company’s platform and CRM applications have revolutionized the way companies collaborate and communicate with their customer.

About Revolution Group
Revolution Group, a Premier Plex Systems Implementation Partner and Registered Salesforce.com Partner, has been delivering solid, business-driven IT solutions and services to manufacturers since 1995. Revolution Group combines technology, a broad understanding of business best practices, and the best hardware and software alternatives to help bring clients cost-effective, reliable and scalable solutions. Their expertise in Plex Online implementation ensures clients the competitive advantage that technology promises. For more information, visit www.revolutiongroup.com.

About Plex Systems, Inc.
Plex Systems, Inc. is the developer of Plex Online, a SaaS ERP (software as a service) cloud ERP solution for the manufacturing enterprise. Plex Online offers industry-leading features for virtually every department within a manufacturer, including Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) and Quality Management Systems (QMS) for the shop floor, Supply Chain Management (SCM) for procurement, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for finance and management. Plex Online’s comprehensive functional coverage delivers a “shop floor to top floor” view of a manufacturer’s operations, enabling management to run its business at maximum efficiency. Founded in 1995, Plex Systems is headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan, with customers around the globe. Follow Plex Systems at twitter.com/PlexSystems. More information is available at www.plex.com.

Plex Systems and Plex Online are trademarks of Plex Systems, Inc.
Prathima Ramesh
Markit Strategies and PR, LLC
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www.markitstrategiesandpr.com

Your Cloud Database Solution

This week is Dreamforce. Salesforce.com‘s hugh event in San Francisco with more than 20,000 attendees. The big announcement this year is Database.com, a cloud database solution that is promising to be the end all data storage solution in the cloud for companies both large and small.

This concept of a cloud database is not that original, but what is original is the fact that you can design your own schema and then attach any platform to it through open APIs. Further, they are giving you user management and communication tools within the same license. So this could be the launching point for any number of applications from simple desktop applications to mobile applications all running on a managed cloud database using Database.com.

Salesforce.com has grown from nothing to a Billion+ dollar company in ten short years. Moving from their mainstay product, Salesforce.com CRM to a platform solution in Force.com has opened a broad area of cloud computing offerings. Now with Database.com as their cloud database solution, they are further reiterating that you do not need infrastructure or computing power. It can all be leased, and for less money than if you invested in-house for the same capabilities.

More about Salesforce.com’s cloud database offering

ERPandMore.com’s partner SoftwareAdvice.com’s CEO Don Fornes sat down at Dreamforce to discuss this new cloud database solution. We were fortunate enough to get an early look at this video and would like to share it with you.

The official cloud database video

As you can see from the video, they are very bullish about the direction of cloud database technology and all the benefits it brings. For a more “official” version of what Database.com is, you can view this video:

This is continuing the drive to Cloud 2.0. This means that you are location independent and utilize the cloud for your computing requirements. A cloud database only supports this endeavor. Let us know where you think this is going. Let us know if a cloud database is in your future!

ERP on the iPad

Mobility is becoming more and more key to managing corporate information. As such, we have seen individual users moving entirely from their laptops to their iPad. This provides easy access to the internet, with information anywhere. This is especially true of cloud computing. With a simple iPad, you can access anything anywhere.

ERP on the iPad can be used in Sales with CRM solutions. In fact, Salesforce.com has a native iPhone app that works on the IPAD, but bother, when you can use it on the web browser just as well? Many ERP solutions now have an html interface, so using the iPad is quite easy.

Apple-iPad-Tablet-NEWEST-MODEL

Examples of ERP on the iPad

Imagine if you will, a manager of a manufacturing plant browsing the production cells and being able to pull up real-time stats on her/his iPad and having the ability to discuss the results with the employees?

Or take an example of an HR Manager in an interview with a candidate in a random conference room, looking up on their iPad the available job postings for other divisions to better suit the candidate at hand.

Working on a campus environment, many times managers are running to meetings between buildings. Carrying an iPad with access to the ERP data is most convenient. These are just a few examples of mobility with ERP on the iPad.

So if these things are now possible, is it possible to run a Terminal Emulation program on the iPad to connect to a legacy ERP on the iPad? As far as we can tell, yes you can do that as there a number of Terminal Emulation programs for the iPhone and iPad. Are these as convenient as a web or even a native iPad app? Probably not, but it can be done.

ERP on the iPad on the Road

What about remote access to the central ERP system? Can you use an iPad while on the road to access your corporate data? Well that really depends upon if you have access via Virtual Private Networking (VPN) to the corporate network. You can setup VPN on the iPad and use it to connect securely to the corporate system. But it does require some setup. If the ERP has a web interface and it is exposed on the public web, then you can log in directly there. This is the easiest for the user, but requires additional layers of security from the IT department.

Security for ERP on the iPad

A key are of concern would be for ERP on the iPad to be able to wipe data for lost iPads. In other words, you’re at an airport. You turn around for a moment and your iPad is gone. You know it was on the seat next to you for a second. You have saved your passwords and access to all your corporate data is gone.

As it is now, the only thing you can do is to set a password and in the iPad’s settings, you can set it to wipe the data after so many bad attempts at the password. Of course, you have a copy on your computer in your iTunes right? So this is one method, but for the release of corporate data being accessible through the iPad, currently, you would probably be using a web browser.

If corporate ERP software providers come out with a dedicated App for their product specifically for the iPad, then they would need to build in some sort of password protection. This will not prevent the iPad from being accessed though, so Apple needs to come out with a function similar to what is available with the iPhone, to wipe corporate data. Without this, there probably won’t be a widespread migration to the iPad until this feature is available.

To summarize, it is possible now to use the iPad for mobile ERP access provided that the ERP is exposed to the Internet or by way of some sort of VPN. But it is probably not the most elegant solution, especially on older ERP systems. Ideally, ERP vendors will start to come out with native applications for the iPad which will ease the complexity for the user. This is already happing with cloud based providers. We hope that it will become more prevalent in the near future.

What do you think? Are you using the ERP on the iPad now? Please post your comments and let us know. Thank you.

Addendum: After posting this, we saw this press release about an iPad Enterprise Development kit for putting ERP on the iPad.

Click here to get great Ipad Training

ERP on the iPad.

Social Networking and ERP?

Social Networking and ERP

Social Networking has become the mainstay of the internet now. Facebook, Twitter, and the like are all drawing people in and essentially training the next generation of computer users. These social media sites are like magnets that people have to go to each and every day to keep up with their friends and share their updates. People are accessing these media sources from all types of devices. It is all absorbing.

One of the biggest problems in most business applications is user adoption. Getting the users to use the Social Networking and ERP together is a key challenge in many applications. So how does the business applications market combine the social media attraction to a financial or manufacturing system? Combining a social media approach to a business management system would seem to be a logical conclusion. But there are obstacles. You have two different elements playing here. The cold hard facts of transactional data and the emotional connectedness of the social media. How can these gel together?

Salesforce.com has begun a trend in combining social media with a business application through their Chatter application. Essentially, Chatter is a Twitter for Salesforce.com. It is an embedded part of Salesforce.com. Users can post status updates and see all of the updates from their chosen connections (friends). But the power of this application is that you can follow business objects within Salesforce.com such as Accounts, Opportunities, Contracts, etc. So anytime an update occurs on these objects, you get a status update, not from a friend, but rather from an application.

Social Networking and ERP in Action

So how would this likely work in an ERP solution? First you could enhance any alerts to post to a status page. Next you could potentially use it to notify you on any changes to any master record, such as customer, supplier, inventory, or BOMs. The next thing you might consider is to have criteria based alerts be in the form of status updates. Post an update when a customer exceeds their credit limit, or post an alert when a critical inventory part is below its optimal stocking level. Together Social Networking and ERP can have an amazing integration of functionality.

The next logical extension of this would be to extend the ERP to the social web. Imagine getting private posts on Facebook when your major customer falls past due or when your shipment that absolutely must go out notifies you that it shipped on time. When Social Networking and ERP converge, you will have seamless integration between your networks, including Twitter, Facebook, and Linkedin.

Social Networking and ERP in the future

The problem with this whole concept is the ability for traditional client server based ERP solutions to move in this direction. Some of the new systems (or recently re-written) solutions may be able to implement this type of functionality quickly, but some of the older technology solutions may have difficulty bringing a social media function quickly to bear. Social Networking and ERP may only be a thing of dreams, but it can very well be reality faster than you might expect. This integration is clearly something that anyone looking for software should watch for and something we should add to our post on What to look out for when selecting software.

As this is a topic with no clear solution yet, what do you our readers think? Where is this going? When will we see it? Please post your comments and thoughts.
Social Networking and ERP

Infor Launches Infor24 Cloud Initiative and Selects Microsoft Windows Azure as Preferred Cloud Platform

Infor and Microsoft

Infor, one of the major players in ERP software, announced today that it has teamed with Micosoft to utilize their Azure platform for SAAS based computing and is offering several cloud based solutions on the Azure Platform. This is a significant move on their part and shows how larger ERP Vendors are moving to cloud computing.

Leading their ERP charge is Syteline, a powerful ERP solution for manufacturers. Taking this to a cloud solution will allow companies without the base infrastructure to utilize this software without the headaches of maintaining application and database servers.

Cloud based ERP should also shorten the implementation timelines of implementations. Using a cloud platform, you have taken the infrastructure questions out of the equation and are now strictly focused on processes and configuration.

You can read the press release here: Infor Launches Infor24 Cloud Initiative and Selects Microsoft Windows Azure as Preferred Cloud Platform.

This seems to be a trend in the industry, ERP software vendors moving to the cloud. Infor is clearly an example of this. What do you think of larger ERP solutions moving to the cloud?

You can see more Infor products in our ERP Vendors Directory.

Infor Launches Infor24 Cloud Initiative

Cloud 2.0 is Here

Watching a recent Salesforce.com partner presentation, we got to see firsthand where the technology world is going specifically to Cloud 2.0. The age of Cloud 2.0 is here. We are moving from fixed environments to web-based, real-time environments. No longer are computers chained to the desktop, now the mobile worker is free to go anywhere.

More importantly, they are updated in real-time on the status of their coworkers, their projects, their subordinates, their customers, all through the new technology of Chatter, within Salesforce.com. If you haven’t heard of Chatter, think of it as Twitter for the corporation.

Social media such as Twitter and Facebook are creating a generation of people who expect real-time updates on their friends and co-workers. Being aware of what people are working on and how they are solving problems through collaborative technologies are more examples of Cloud 2.0. Facebook has become a giant part of the web. In fact, in the younger generation, Facebook is the web. In general, if not monitored, you are likely to find more people on Facebook than on their business systems at any time. So why not bring the power of Facebook to business systems? That is what Salesforce is attempting to do with Chatter.

With the release of the iPad, there is now a tablet based mobile technology that can bring the web vividly to anyone, anywhere. At first, we thought it was purely and entertainment platform, but the more we understand it, the more we see that Apple is now moving to both a mobile and web based computing platform. It could probably be the next generation of Macintoshes for the cloud generation. People are now able to create, produce, and develop from anywhere there is a cell phone signal (or wifi).

Comparing Cloud 2.0 to Legacy Computing

Here is Salesforce’s view of Cloud 2.0. This says a lot!

Cloud 1.0	Cloud 2.0
Amazon.com	Facebook
Tabs	Feeds
Pull	Push
Click	Touch
Desktop	Smartphone/Tablet
Fixed	Mobile
Location Unknown	Location aware
Windows/Mac	Cocoa/HTML5

No longer are we talking about managing a business from within the four walls of the company. Businesses can now operate virtually. Further, sales will love this new technology as they can prep for their meetings in the parking lot with real-time pushed data, they will be able to connect to their customers and build relationships and then report back immediately via their iPad to their CRM, and they will have real-time insight into everything about that client by way of the mobile web.

As you can see the combination of social media, interactive CRM and ERP, and mobile touch computing such as the iPhone or iPad are changing the landscape of computing and IT. It is an exciting time to be in technology!

Cloud 2.0