News & Views

November 14, 2011 from BusinessFinance – “As Workday continues to expand and the likelihood of its IPO becomes a more frequent topic of discussion, so does the movement of ERP systems to the cloud. Thus far, only a minority of companies have chosen to put their ERP and accounting systems in the cloud, but the numbers are growing and there’s evidence of success. NetSuite, for example, reported a 26 percent increase in its revenues to $145 million in the nine months up to Sept. 30, 2011. To be sure, this is not close to Salesforce.com’s size and growth rate over the past decade, but it does indicate a growing acceptance of the cloud for this software category…

Those identified as cloud vendors that publish financial statements are currently showing strong growth. Yet what we mean by “cloud computing” is likely to evolve, as will the incumbents’ offerings. The big vendors have big resources, they have (or will have) cloud offerings and are pursuing broader platform strategies that may provide compelling advantages to some customers. The smaller vendors are showing flexibility. The cliché of the fat lady has yet to sing applies to the current environment.”

180 View – Our view is that it is futile to resist the cloud. The major vendors have jumped on the cloud bandwagon and will soon offer cloud-like alternatives. We find that many small and midsized businesses are ready to take the leap into the clouds and believe there is a business case and that the cloud vendors will protect their data.