Clouding the Differences Between Hosted and On-Premise ERP

The big debate over SaaS vs Traditional on-premise ERP software solutions has quickly become moot with the advent of customer’s demands for hybrid approaches to software deployment.

In the early days (e.g. pre 2010!) of Cloud based ERP, consumers had a choice between going with an SaaS vendor or a traditional on-premise vendor.  In the SaaS world, customers rented software by paying a monthly fee on a fee per user basis.  The fee included hosting of the servers and data, license subscriptions, and support. On-premise software, on the other hand, was purchased as a perpetual license, the customer provided their own servers “on-premise”, and support was charged as an annual fee.

At Visibility we offer both. But in the last few years, more hybrid models have emerged to meet the evolving demand of our customers. Customers have requested several emerging scenarios:

1. Start on Cloud, move on-premise: Initial cloud deployment, so that implementations can be jump started in the cloud while internal networks or servers are being procured and installed.  Once installed, the software and database is moved back “on-premise”.

1. Start on-premise, move to the cloud: Purchased and installed ERP systems are moved out to be hosted in the cloud.  This alleviates the need for upgrading servers and networks.

1. Mix: Have a permanent situation where some components are hosted, others kept on-premise. A variety of demands have created mixed implementation setups. Customers can install and deploy on-premise, but have a cloud instance, for example, for disaster recovery. Customers may install their ERP database in the cloud, but have their business intelligence on-premise, or visa versa.

Evolving demands have prompted Visibility to create evolving solutions for our customers.  By staying agile, we have been able to offer different pricing models depending on the situation.  Hosting perpetual licenses or software as a service recurring monthly licenses. Moving all or select components to and from the cloud and back again. 

ERP software vendors, like Visibility, today need total flexibility with their deployment options to remain agile enough to meet the demands of a constantly changing marketplace and sophisticated customer requirements and to stay competitive in the ERP market.

To learn more about Visibility's cloud-based, on-premise, or hybrid ERP solution click here.