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Strategize and Migrate with Expert Oracle Cloud Advisory

Machine learning (ML) is a subset of artificial intelligence (AI) and comprises a set of technologies that utilize a large number of data sets for training and testing. Although the concept of machine learning itself isn’t new — the term was first defined in 1959 — it has largely been out of the reach of organizational budgets.

Today, with machine learning services becoming an offering of many public clouds, it has become both affordable and accessible. Google Cloud Platform, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure, all offer ML with such ease of use that it no longer requires a team of data scientists to implement.

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The coming together of machine learning and cloud computing has given rise to “the intelligent cloud” because ML has given birth to a number of new cloud services. A few of them are listed below:

Cognitive Computing

Cognitive Computing enables apps to see, listen, talk, and make decisions with the use of ML technologies.

Business Intelligence (BI)

Cloud computing has greatly improved business intelligence — with intelligent insights and accurate forecasting — by merging BI platforms with ML-based tools.

Internet of Things (IoT)

Data-driven platforms on the cloud have made it possible for data to be captured from various sensors in large quantities, making IoT more intelligent.

Bots-as-a-service

Messaging platforms can now be integrated with bots who can respond to website visitor queries, and converse with them.

Personal Assistants

Voice-based personal assistants like Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, and Cortana are all powered by machine learning to offer customized experiences for users.

Machine learning can now be easily leveraged, thanks to the cloud. With its pay-as-you-go model, it becomes even more easy to experiment with various ML capabilities and scale up or down any time. And thanks to machine learning, the cloud is now intelligent — learning from the vast ocean of data stored in it and creating better predictions and, thereby, smarter solutions.

If you have been contemplating cloud adoption but putting it off for various reasons — security concerns, apprehensions about tangible benefits, and so on — you need to see who recently moved their ERP to the cloud!

US Navy Takes to the Cloud

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In August 2019, the US Navy was in the news for taking the first step towards cloud migration! Data of over 72,000 users from six Navy commands were moved from an in-house ERP to an Amazon Web Services cloud system. The rest of the data — from other disconnected networks and dispersed sources — are expected to be moved to the cloud gradually, over the next two years.

The Navy chiefs said that this move is expected to increase accessibility, facilitate immediate availability, better visibility for monitoring of parts moving through the pipeline, and easier auditing and reporting. It is also expected to improve security as it will be easier to check for threats and vulnerabilities in a single system, rather than in multiple disparate locations.

Benefits and Beyond

Just as the Navy chiefs of the USA came to recognize, cloud computing comes with a number of benefits that improve overall performance and management of data. You can read more about these and other benefits in an earlier article here.

While these benefits are pretty much generic to cloud computing and can be enjoyed any time (if you’ve chosen your cloud platforms wisely), here are a few reasons why you need to move from an on-premise ERP to a cloud-based one NOW.

A number of ERP companies are coming up with updates, which require hardware updates and lease renewals. This means you will need to plan for investment, both in terms of hardware and data center space. By deciding to move to a cloud-based ERP instead, you can cut down on this capex.

The period of fear over cloud security has passed. Yes, there is the occasional news of a data breach — but people are becoming increasingly aware that there is the same amount of risk with on-premise ERPs as well. The myths about cloud security are progressively being busted and a number of security enhancing solutions are becoming available in the market. So, this is probably the best time to make the pitch and convince your organizational heads to make the transition.

Did you know that over 70% of enterprises are currently in the process of migrating their ERP applications to the cloud? To make sure you don’t get left behind, you should too!

A Word to the Wise

As with any cloud migration, ERP migrations to the cloud are not without challenges. Therefore, it is important that you evaluate your options, assess costs (both initial and ongoing), prepare a migration checklist, and plan your cloud migration strategy with caution.

If you find migrating your existing on-premise ERP to be tedious, you can also consider choosing a cloud-based SaaS alternative to replace it.