FEATURE
Paul Cartwright , Technology & Innovation Director , ERP , Node4
enterprise-wide software solutions and established inter-departmental agreements about sharing data across the organisation . But none of these things happened , and as a result , data became siloed once again .
Getting the best results from business intelligence software
IT decision-makers quickly realised this approach would not work and , as the pandemic ’ s work from home directives gave way to longterm hybrid working routines , they were keen to address the issue .
Organisations needed the seamless data flow offered by monolithic ERP solutions . However , they were in no mood to compromise on poorly performing modules or accept siloed data due to third-party bolt-ons .
Application integration became even more important as business intelligence software continued to advance . IT decision-makers wanted to use these solutions to spot customer trends and develop new offerings . However , to work effectively , business intelligence software needs unrestricted data access – data silos and restricted information access mean less comprehensive results .
For all these reasons , many businesses are now choosing to replace their legacy monolithic ERP software with a selection of modular business applications within a public cloud environment .
Public cloud adoption driven by a desire for application integration
The major cloud service providers , Microsoft , Google and AWS , now offer application stores and marketplaces for businesses . They ’ re easy to navigate and look a lot like their consumer application counterparts . This makes it even easier to select compatible best-of-breed software offerings and create a bespoke enterprise-wide ERP solution .
As such , an increasing number of mid-market organisations , in particular , are telling us that this choice and flexibility , combined with the potential for cost savings , is driving public cloud adoption and has become a catalyst for Digital Transformation .
Of course , there ’ s still work to be done to ensure individual business applications can communicate with each other and share data securely . Advances in API technology and software developer willingness to build API gateways into their solutions definitely make it easier . However , cloud service providers do their best to make things as simple as possible . Looking at the Microsoft universe , for example , there ’ s a range of Azure Integration Services on offer , including API
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