By Jason English
We all know where this train is going. Enterprise IT is making an inexorable departure toward a cloud-based future, while many of their core systems like Oracle and SAP are still sitting on the platform.
Over the last 20 years, businesses constantly replaced on-premises application suites and desktop tools
with on-demand SaaS and cloud-based services. Companies naturally prefer procuring software flexibly on a pay-as-you-go basis, rather than a license-per-seat or per-datacenter basis.
The great switch-out of CapEx for OpEx started with CRM tools to support the most remote work function: sales. Salesforce and MS Dynamics brought on the first SaaS wave, but this buying pattern gradually spread to many other aspects of the business: recruiting, time management, expenses, productivity, and file sharing.
Still, for most companies, there’s still some big iron enterprise systems that haven’t yet been loaded onto the train to cloud. Will they make the trip without going off the rails?
