Business models are significantly evolving alongside technology. When it comes to making the right choice for your business you have to consider the long-term effects it will have on your ability to keep up with or surpass the competition. As a business operator, you have an obligation to commit to the best, most secure, valuable and handy services that allow your business to focus on doing the core functions (and not wasting time with supportive tasks, that are not in your comfort zone).
The “better investment”, without a doubt, is cloud computing over on-premise infrastructures.
The basic difference between an on-premise system and SaaS (software as a service) is that on-premise solutions are installed locally on your company's hardware and servers and then managed by your IT team while a cloud solution is provided to you as a service, inherently reducing the total cost of ownership of your software infrastructure.
Due to the nature of cloud computing, SaaS allows your business to operate at the forefront of software development, which means that moving from on-premise infrastructure benefits not only the company's wallet, but also create a considerable increase in efficiency, productivity and accessibility of business operations.
According to BCSG research, 64% of midmarket companies were using cloud-based solutions in 2016, and adoption is expected to increase to 88% in the next two to three years. This means that most companies now use at least one form of SaaS in their business, making SaaS one of the most widely used forms of cloud delivery among enterprises today.
For B2B integrations, the software as a service market fit is perfect and iPaaS is an essential tool.
A cloud B2B integration solution’s deployment time is much shorter in comparison to on-premise systems. You can deploy a cloud-based service across multiple regions, subsidiaries, and divisions, avoiding the cost associated with those rollouts. No additional hardware is needed, which means you don't need to waste time procuring and installing IT infrastructure and VPN access across multiple sites. You can add more connections, volumes and message types as your business needs grow or regulation requires, without ever thinking about improving the hardware. Cloud-based systems are built to ensure maximum network performance and are adaptive to your needs unlike on-premise setups, where speed and performance rely on your in-house servers. This means that as your business grows, you will outgrow the server’s capacity and will have to buy and install more hardware and possibly hire and train more IT department members.
Initial costs of a cloud-based setup are usually much lower than the costs of on-premise systems because you only need to implement the software according to your requirements. Although the process takes much less time to implement than an on-premise solution, time is still a factor when budgeting for your new cloud-based B2B integration service. Each IT vendor has its own model and rates, so you must make sure to shop around for a solution that will best suit your budget and needs. In B2B integrations the onboarding of trading partners takes some time, but when they are rolled in, it converts into pure savings. It’s also possible to bake in the onboarding to the OPEX cost, and even migrate the existing integrations in bulks to the new, modern offering.
No hardware maintenance or repairs are necessary. Downtimes, if any, have a low impact because SaaS providers have access to a much larger workforce than what most companies have access to, which will put any failure back on track in very little time. Restoring and data backup are also taken care of by the data centers.
Your IT team will spend a lot of time and money maintaining an on-premise system and administering regular check-ups to avoid unnecessary downtime and ensure the system is up and running when you need it. You must ensure regular backups and do a full disaster recovery test to ensure you are not backing up any corrupted data. The costs of proper ventilation for your servers and hardware - not to mention repairs - must also be considered.
Upgrades are done by your B2B integration service provider, which ensures you're using the most up-to-date version of the software without needing to reimplement or re-customize any of your preset features. With a genuine cloud system, your customizations are always portable to future versions.
Some on-site software can be customized, but those customizations are typically linked to your current software deployment and are not easily portable to future versions. As upgrades become available, your customizations might not be portable to future versions. When it's time for your system to be upgraded, your IT team will have to test all customizations and redeploy the system across the various users' computers if it’s installed locally on workstations. Everyone has heard scary stories about upgrade projects, which cost a lot, cause trouble internally and externally and make lives harder.
We are working with world-leading companies. There is a lot of re-usability, replicability and added-value to all stakeholders. Domain expertise along with good track record and heavy investment in R&D enables the digitization of B2B integration to modern era. Everyone in this equation benefits a lot, long term.
To learn more, download our iPaaS product sheet: