Migrating your ERP system to the cloud: What you need to know
Migrating your Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system like Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) to the cloud provides major benefits. This comprehensive guide covers the key advantages of migrating ERP to Cloud Infrastructure and provides detailed considerations for transitioning your ERP system smoothly.
Migrating ERP to Cloud: Key Benefits & Considerations
The compelling benefits of migrating ERP to cloud
Transitioning your ERP system to the cloud offers multiple advantages that can transform your business operations, costs, and ability to innovate. Let's explore the top benefits that migrating EBS to OCI provides.
Enhanced scalability and agility
One of the biggest perks of migrating your ERP to the cloud is gaining the ability to scale computing resources up or down on demand. With an on-premises ERP system, you are constrained by fixed hardware capacity. As your business needs fluctuate, you may end up with idle excess capacity or insufficient capacity during peaks.
With a cloud-based ERP like EBS on OCI, you can dynamically scale capacity precisely when you need it. This elastic scalability provides tremendous agility. If you have a seasonal spike in transactions, you can instantly add capacity temporarily. Planning a major new product launch or acquisition? Cloud ERP allows seamlessly scaling up to support the expanded needs.
This agility enables you to quickly adapt your ERP system to match changing business requirements. According to Deloitte, over 75% of CIOs rated scalability as a moderate or critical benefit of cloud ERP. The cloud's flexible capacity empowers you to be nimble and responsive as business needs evolve.
Robust data security
Data security is a top concern when moving critical systems like ERP to the cloud. The good news is that proper cloud implementations often provide better security than traditional on-premises data centers. Legacy data centers face security risks from insider threats and lack the redundancy to recover quickly from disasters.
OCI offers built-in security capabilities like encryption, role-based access controls, and network security rules. EBS on OCI also provides automated backups, software patching, and ransomware protection. OCI further replicates and distributes data across multiple isolated data centers for rapid disaster recovery.
According to Oracle, customers moving EBS to OCI realized a 72% reduction in security risks on average. With the right cloud provider, you can not only match but exceed your current security posture.
Significant cost reductions
Migrating your ERP system to the efficient, pay-as-you-go OCI cloud can substantially reduce costs compared to maintaining a legacy on-premises system. Oracle states that running EBS on OCI costs on average 38% less than hosting on-premises and 44% less than other major clouds like AWS or Azure.
The cloud eliminates expenses like purchasing and maintaining your own hardware and data centers. It also allows right-sizing resources based on your actual usage, eliminating waste. The flexible subscription-based pricing provides predictable costs that scale up and down with your needs.
According to IDC, organizations can achieve 14-20% lower 5-year cost of operations by moving ERP to the cloud. The cost efficiencies free up resources to invest in innovation and growth initiatives.
Faster innovation
Per Gartner, the percentage of enterprise workloads running in the cloud is projected to grow from 20% in 2020 to over 40% by 2023. Migrating EBS to OCI positions you to leverage the cloud's cutting-edge capabilities.
The cloud allows tapping into advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, IoT, and analytics much faster than on-premises alternatives. You can integrate innovative cloud services to enable capabilities like predictive forecasting, intelligent process automation, and sentiment analysis without large upfront investments.
Becoming an early adopter of cloud ERP establishes your organization as an innovation leader in your industry. According to IDG, 89% of organizations say cloud ERP enabled them to be more innovative. The agility, scalability, and innovation of the cloud provide long-term strategic differentiation.
Key factors to consider when migrating ERP to the cloud
Migrating your ERP system from on-premises to the cloud enables transformative benefits but requires careful planning and execution. Here are some key considerations for ensuring a smooth and successful migration to EBS on OCI:
Assess your existing landscape
Start by thoroughly evaluating your current ERP architecture, integrations, data, workflows, and reporting. This analysis identifies any complexities, challenges, dependencies, and risks to address in your migration plan.
Take stock of all the interfaces between your ERP system and other business applications. Document customizations and extensions you have made to the ERP. Assessing your landscape illuminates the scope, effort, and steps involved in shifting EBS to OCI.
Build out cloud infrastructure
An ERP migration requires setting up new cloud infrastructure like virtual machines, storage, and networking on OCI. Determine infrastructure sizing needs for optimal performance and plan architecture for high availability.
Institute strong security controls across networks, access policies, encryption, and monitoring. Design infrastructure to take advantage of cloud scalability and innovations.
Mitigate risks
Develop a risk management plan including strategies to avoid downtime and data loss. Perform extensive pre-migration testing and implement data backups. Provide training to help employees learn new cloud processes.
Migrating in stages can reduce risk. Many organizations take a phased approach migrating ERP modules one-by-one to the cloud. This allows resolving any issues with a small portion before moving additional components.
Validate functionality
Once on OCI, thoroughly test performance, connectivity, and functionality. Verify migrated data and integrations operate correctly. Conduct user acceptance testing and monitor system health.
Testing validates a smooth transition while surfacing any post-migration issues to address. Take advantage of cloud agility to optimize architecture and costs based on learnings.
Retrain staff
Using ERP on the cloud requires new skills and processes for your team. Provide extensive training on administering, customizing, and interfacing with cloud EBS.
Empower IT staff to leverage cloud-native capabilities like automation and analytics. Documentation and support resources help employees adapt. Retraining is an investment that unlocks the cloud's full potential.
Conclusion: Partner for successful ERP to cloud migration
Migrating your ERP system to the cloud allows leveraging leading-edge innovations, driving cost savings, and future-proofing operations. While requiring planning, the long-term gains are transformational.
However, ERP migrations also pose risks if not executed methodically. Working with experienced partners like LK Technologies can help you migrate EBS to OCI smoothly while avoiding pitfalls. Their experts can assess your landscape, build cloud architecture, migrate data securely, validate functionality, and train your staff.
Investing in the right guidance ensures you migrate your ERP to the cloud in a way that maximizes benefits and ROI. Reach out to explore how expert partners can enable your ERP cloud journey today.
