Research Paper
Undergraduate
Managing IT Complexity the Role,
The role, related initiatives, strategies and programs of any leader that manages an IT function is critically important to the success of any enterprise. As global economies and their value have been transforming from…
Service-oriented architectures and enterprise resource planning in multinational organizations
Agility, time-to-market and insights into market dynamics are a few of the many benefits of standardizing the operations of an organization on an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Up until about a decade ago, the economics of enterprise software relegated these systems to larger, more diverse and well-capitalized enterprises, with the majority of ERP systems being installed and customized in Fortune 1,000 corporations (Velcu, 2010). These ERP implementations began to be pervasively supported by Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) during the later 1990s and continue throughout today. As SOA architectures have permeated organizations, the lessons learned from a business process re-engineering (BPR), distributed order management and software engineering gains have contributed to the success of Cloud computing in general and Software-as-a-Service specifically (Moore, 2002). In addition, Open Source Software (OSS), Cloud- and SaaS-based ERP systems (Passion for Research, 2012b) and a complete redefining of the economics of enterprise software have taken place. All of these many determinants of enterprise software economics have in turn changed the ERP landscape significantly over the last decade. Today, Small & Medium Enterprises (SME) can afford, via the economics of Cloud computing, to have the same level of functionality enterprise had in the past. SMEs can now can gain the same benefits that Fortune 1,000 companies could only afford in the past. The intent of this analysis is to evaluate these underlying economics of cloud computing, specifically looking at how Open Source Software (OSS) and Cloud computing are re-ordering the economics of enterprise software in addition to discussing the limitations, advantages and disadvantages for SMEs interested in gaining the benefits of ERP systems. Finally, strategies for implementing ERP in SMEs is analyzed and presented including an assessment of a successful Cloud implementation.