SAP Business One On The Cloud Or On Premises For SMEs – A Discussion

Are you planning to engage a suitable business solution for your organization? If yes, the next question will obviously be related to the location of the server. Whether you want your data on the cloud or need a computer inside your premises for recording and saving all your business information? This question totally depends on your requirement and preference as if you are a small or medium enterprise, these both options are available in the market and you can choose anyone of them.

To help you out in this regard, we want to mention that all ERP solutions are available for both types of users. At the moment, the multi-national and large organizations are shifting their data in the cloud and it is expected that till 2020, more than 92% businesses will shift to the cloud based ERP solutions. But, sometimes, you need not to buy it and there are several reasons behind it. Let’s us discuss them first!

• You have a single office in the world.
• You are a small or medium enterprise and you want to work in a single city.
• All your customers or clients are local and you have an easy access to them.

If you are one of those organizations described above, you can go for on-premises SAP Business One in the UAE. For small and medium enterprises, on-premises is equally good and you can use it if you are not interested in it.

But if you want to increase your business and open branches in different states of your country or in other countries, you need to engage a cloud based ERP solution. If you have international clients or you may import or export some materials or products, you need a cloud based ERP solution.

Now, the question is at which level of SAP Business One in UAE, you need to implement a cloud based system your organization. You need to consider following options before deployment:

• Do you want to continue with an on-premises ERP solution or change it now?
• Are you convinced that you need on the cloud ERP solution or it is a marketing team which is convincing you?
• If your business has been established in the international market or the marketing team is trying to get more from you?

If you are answering above questions with a confidence, you can take a decision of engaging in the cloud ERP system. It is an obvious decision for any business to stretch its legs for generating more revenues, but it must be in a systematic way. If you think that you need to have a cloud-based data as you are always on the move and want to get every business information whether you are in a country or not, you need cloud based solution otherwise you can stick with on-premises SAP Business One in UAE.

For on-premise ERP solutions, the implementation process represents the greatest overall expense. A typical implementation requires most, if not all, of the following expense items: hardware, software licenses, database licenses and external implementation consultants who usually assist in the design, perform the installation and provide training to staff. Often, the implementation consultants will also deliver customizations or modifications to the code of the core software to fulfill the unique needs of a small business, especially one in a specialized vertical niche. Add to this the cost of housing an “industrial-strength” processing and storage capacity network infrastructure that is “cyber-safe” and is configured and maintained by high-priced IT experts.

Cloud-based ERP systems usually require much lower up-front costs due to the absence of any significant IT expenses such as hardware and support staff. Unlike on-premise solutions, the primary up-front and recurring cost is the periodic subscription fee for software hosted on remote third party servers and accessed online. Subscriptions are usually pay-as-you-go, which means a lower initial investment and the ability to withdraw from the subscription if the solution doesn’t perform as desired. This paradigm shifts more of the risk to the software vendor, who is likely going to try to do what it takes to keep your business.