There were several breakout sessions at the Exact Macola Evolve 2016 conference regarding having applications and data in a cloud system, yet Exact has decided to not provide this service themselves as of yet, nor do we think they will, as it is outside their core competency.
Derek Ochs, Director of New Product Development for Exact, held a breakout session on the fundamentals of cloud computing. He shared a lot of knowledge regarding the difference between Software as a Service, Hosted, and Private Cloud solutions.
Cloud and Hosted Solutions
- Saas (Software as a Service) is where applications are rented, such as SalesForce, and are “multi-tenant” applications. While there is some customization available, the software developer determines the schedule when everyone will be updated. Customizations are limited in this environment.
- Co-location is where you bring your servers to a local data center, and rent floor space, utilities and internet access to run your applications from their data center rather than your server room or closet. You still have to manage these servers, replace them as they age, patch them, etc.
- Hosted applications are where your licenses get loaded on a public cloud somewhere such as Amazon Cloud, where you still do all of the servers patching, installation the applications, and perform all of the ongoing management yourself. You don’t own the hardware in this scenario, and it is replaced for you as is required.
- A private cloud is a dedicated environment, where specific servers are assigned to your company for hosting your applications. This is similar to the service that Attivo provides with the Attivo Dedicated Cloud. In this environment, you have dedicated servers for your company’s requirements, along with all of the services necessary to manage the environment including installing the applications and ongoing monitoring, patching and all other care and feeding of the servers and the application. Included in the price is the ongoing replacement of all server and other equipment, as well as upgrades to the operating environment and SQL Server.
Considering Going Cloud with your ERP solutions?
Attivo has quite a few years of experience with cloud hosting, and has made it a service focus, and is therefore ahead of the curve in providing cloud solutions for Exact Macola. So, if you’re considering cloud options instead of on-location servers, please be sure to check out our Cloud and Hosted ERP information.
For a complete recap of Evolve 2016 you can also check out this pre-recorded webinar.
