An ERP solution is often one of the most paramount decisions a company will have to make. Although ERP solutions have become relatively less expensive over the years, it's still an important financial decision and one whose functionality has a direct impact on most parts of your business, like human resources, accounting, manufacturing, and marketing. ERP solutions being a critical component of business, buyers should research not only what’s currently available, but also what ERP solution trends are on the horizon. These are the Top ERP trends to look out for in 2020: 1. Two-Tier Model: This model is a combination of more than one software or vendor. Given its difficulty with integration in the initial stages of implementation, it is advisable for businesses to prepare an implementation strategy for this type of model of ERP. 2. Increased Adoption in SMBs: Mostly small and mid-sized businesses tend to adopt ERP systems, especially, as companies are making judicious IT investments. ERP can fortunately provide an end-to-end performance in just one system. A few years ago, ERP was mainly used in large enterprises, but with the increased affordability and accessibility, the software has become popular in SMBs, as well. 3. Agile ERP: Among CIOs, the waterfall model will become less desirable, and Agile model will take over the market. The reason behind that is, In the waterfall methodology, the problem does not get noticed or addressed until it becomes a major one. In a dynamic business environment, Agile ERP works better.  4. Customer-Centric ERP: Most ERP solutions are designed to fulfill managing requirements in areas such as, accounts, audits, supply chain, and warehouse. A customer-centric approach has never proved useful in the ERP solution. In 2020, we will be seeing significant changes in this approach because a strategic tactic will be applied, and tech giants will try to make it more customer-friendly. 5. Security & Compliance: ERP has become a necessity for most businesses. There has been an increase in prioritizing compliance and security in businesses. One has seen specific ERP’s like SAP Business One which is GST compliant and it continually upgrades the software. 6. Personalized ERP: We will witness an increase in personalization with ERP solutions with the rise of AI. The flexible solution will support personalization and will have more user-interfaces. ERP and AI have to function together to provide a more personalized experience to the customer because they are both like the body and brain.  7. Focus on Functionality: The functionality will be considered over the pricing; if existing ERP solutions cannot provide certain features required by customers, then they will most likely be replaced by a newer solution, one which may already be available in the market. 8. Real-Time Insights: Most of the new ERPs are transforming. They now enable systems to generate reports from captured data and support real-time responses. The transformed infrastructure creates a way for traditional ERPs to execute such processes, which can supply businesses with insights for planning and forecasting purposes. Real-time insights generated from said ERP trends and proper strategic planning can be helpful for businesses in the long-term. 9. Augmented Human Capabilities: Some advanced ERP solutions will put forward unique intelligence capabilities, which can enable automation. ERP alongside advanced human capabilities will increase the efficiency of an employee, which can potentially have a direct impact on the performance of the company. 10. Friendly User Interface (UI): As organizations start adopting the latest technology to get more real-time data. Interaction with the ERP system will increase as an increase in the number of employees. Better UI and appealing design will be part of a newly evolved interface.  This is necessary because most of the employees are from the tapping generation than from the typing generation. 11. BI & ERP: ERP systems will move forward by providing real-time insights for the product development, productivity, marketing, operational efficiencies of businesses. For example, a production manager in the manufacturing industry can monitor the floor’s scrap rate from the real-time data with this combination of BI and ERP. 12. Cloud-Based ERPs: In 2019, we saw an increase in the adoption of the cloud among businesses, large and small. This trend seems to continue in 2020 as well, especially, as cloud solutions are entirely managed by providers, which free IT teams from strict maintenance efforts. As in-house servers are not required to support this functionality, there is also the added bonus of lower up-front costs. To Sum Up: 2020 will witness new ERP trends getting introduced in the market, which can disrupt the entire business and technical scenario in an organization. High-level decision-makers must watch out for upcoming trends and see how they can affect the structure, output, and business results of an organization.  

'Managed Services' is the latest jargon floating around the Information Technology (IT) domain. A person working in the IT domain must be coming across this term frequently.

While searching for an answer to 'how much managed services cost,' you would come across various types of services offered and pricing models for the same. It can be an exhausting, confusing, and frustrating process. By the end of this article, you will be able to fathom nearly all the contributing cost factors, as well as understand the pricing models of Managed IT services. Before we look at how much 'Managed IT Services' cost, we need to understand what is meant by the term 'Managed Services' precisely. What is 'Managed IT services'? A range of various IT functions that are provided to a customer by a third-party IT specialist. These services provided by the third party provider/specialist is known as managed IT services, and the third party is known as a Managed Services Provider (MSP). In simple terms, Managed IT service provides IT related solution and maintains IT of the business. The cost of professional managed IT services In this field, the most important thing is the price factor; it will vary and usually depend on many determinants. It won't be wise to expect a fixed price from every managed IT service company out there. Even the same company will be charging a different price when different businesses or organizations are taken into consideration. However, everything is predictable if you follow the trail, a well-organized pattern of pricing and if you manage to work it out through your head, then you will be able to estimate an approximate price. Most of the times, the following factor determines the prices of a managed IT company.

• The company's efficiency in solving various tasks
• The area of your marketing campaign
• The competition that you are facing
• Skills of specialist and employees.

There are various pricing models followed by different Managed IT Service providers: 1. Traditional Approach a) Break-Fix model: The customer doesn't pay anything until something in inoperational, at which point their IT support company will fix it and charge them. 2. Modern Approach a) Per device: Per device is when you are charged per supported device. "Per device makes more sense in the hospitality space, especially when you involve rental hardware in the mix." - Chris Rumpf, Founder (Rumpf Computer Solutions) b) Per-user: It is similar to per device, but a flat fee is billed at the end of the month based on the number of users. This covers support for all devices used by each user, which could mean a smartphone, laptop, and office PC are all covered for one individual. "Per-user all the way. The devices are going away as more things move to the cloud. Getting paid per-device is a shrinking game." -Thomas Clancy, Jr., President (Valiant) c) Tiered: Which provides different package tiers that correspond to defined service levels. These tiers are structured, based on cost and resources, with a specific price point. d) Monitoring: A bare minimum approach to managed IT services. It provides network monitoring and alerting services, but solutions support could require extra fees. It can be sold in small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), as well as midsize and enterprise environments. e) Flat based range: This model is extremely flexible and includes all remote support. There is on-site support for an entire organization for a flat fee per month. f) A La Carte: A La Carte model offers flexibility and customization that creates an optimized solution for each client, but it is the most difficult to sell and the most difficult to sustain profitability. "I recommend bundling as much as possible. This keeps your offering simple for service delivery, billing, and marketing. While there's always a need to offer some a la carte options, I recommend keeping them to a minimum." -Dave Wilkeson, CEO (MSP Advisor) Primarily, as company size increases, the competition will grow, more significant will be the number of devices requiring these services, and the higher will be the cost of managed IT services.

“Reinvent new combinations of what you already own. Improvise. Become more creative. Not because you have to, but because you want to. Evolution is the secret for the next step.”

― Karl Lagerfeld

We have come a long way from what we have been. There was never a revolution, and there never will be, our life is part of a long evolution process. We evolve, we think, we build, we fail, and we succeed. Most importantly, in between, we learn.

Cloud computing has gone mainstream, swiftly earning a place among the key pillars of enterprise technology. We did not stop there; we started exploring further opportunities and looked for better business enterprise strategies, which led to ‘Multi-Cloud Strategy’. What is Multi-Cloud? When enterprises use more than one cloud platform which comprises of public, private, and hybrid clouds and each platform delivers a specific application service to achieve the end goals, the platform uses services in a single heterogeneous architecture known as ‘Multi-Cloud’, which is also known as a ‘Polynimbus’. Often, it is confused with the hybrid cloud. Hybrid cloud is an infrastructure while multi-cloud is a strategy. Multi-cloud strategy may use several different architectures, such as IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) and SaaS (Software as a Service) to achieve business goals. It aims to eliminate the reliance on any single cloud provider by using different providers to meet specific workload requirements. Why are enterprises adopting Multi-Cloud Strategy? Businesses distribute their resources between different cloud service providers to avoid latency and testing in an isolated environment. If one cloud is offline, then the enterprise may still work with other clouds and achieve their goals. It’s also customizable and flexible in the sense that an enterprise may “select the ‘best’ of each cloud type to suit their niche business needs, economics, locations, and timing.”  Another significant draw for a multi-cloud adoption is that enterprises can escape vendor lock-in as their data is stored on various service providers’ clouds. The Multi-Cloud Strategy offers security precautions that a single cloud deployment does not.  The well-known Shadow IT activities take place within an organization without their explicit approval. Multi-cloud will hinder these Shadow IT activities. Multi-Cloud Strategy also dodges the gravity of a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack as the attack won’t affect all the clouds within a multi-cloud, leaving the enterprise still functional despite the attack. Advantages of Multi-Cloud Strategy: 1. Cherry-picked services There is not a single cloud service provider who has the best tools for everything. You can choose the best services and tools from multiple cloud service providers, as per your requirement. 2. Improved disaster recovery There is not a single cloud service provider who has avoided a significant outage. By using two or more cloud service providers, you can make your infrastructure is more resilient, and you could keep replicas of your applications in multiple separate clouds so that, if one cloud goes down, you don’t. 3. Potential negotiating power Competition among major cloud service providers and being a high-volume customer may put you in a position to negotiate lower prices. You may be able to leverage your position by distributing your business amongst different providers. 4. Less single-vendor dependency It can be risky to depend on a single provider for multiple products and/or services. Power outages, decline in the quality of service and unexpected cost overrun are common variables that companies go through from time to time; and cloud providers are no exception to this. It is advisable to not put all your eggs in one basket and thus, minimize the risk on your business operations.   Disadvantages of Multi-Cloud Strategy: 1. Managing costs and loss of discounts If you have difficulty managing the cost for a single cloud service provider, you can imagine how much trouble you may have working with multiple providers. By distributing your resources and adding multiple providers, you may be losing discounts that you are entitled to. 2. Performance challenges Working with multiple cloud service providers may create challenges to assign the company’s resources to the right cloud service provider. For example, when a company is deploying their resources with a cloud service provider who may have many essential tools but not the ones that the company requires, it may result in poor performance for the company 3. Increased security risk Public cloud gives you less control over your data; moving to two public clouds gives you even less control. Besides, it creates a larger attack surface for your application. There are tools to secure multi-clouds that you may have to generally exercise a greater level of diligence in operating. 4. Multi-cloud management In a multi-cloud environment, managing cost is not the only thing you have to worry about. Managing all your data and resources on different platforms can be very complicated. Fortunately, there are some cloud management platforms with multi-cloud support. TechTarget conducted a survey among 260 enterprises, and the results showed that the majority of the enterprises use multi-cloud strategy. That means the advantages of it are far more valuable and disadvantages can be ignored or positively overthrown by a guided strategy. Multi-Cloud Strategy helps organizations to be less dependent on one service provider. You can replicate your resources and avoid unexpected breakdowns in the system. Your organization can also benefit from negotiating prices with service providers. Managing multi-cloud may seem like a challenge, however, if you leverage cloud management platforms efficiently, there is no need for panic.

Valentine’s Day is a great day to reflect on something we are grateful for and the things we love. Even though not all of may get to spend time with a special someone one or will be giving or receiving chocolates and roses, there are still many other things to love, including Cloud Computing. Cloud is always there for you: Like the ones we want in our lives, Cloud solutions are available 24/7*365 days, with several Cloud-enabled technologies offering guaranteed uptime in their Service Level Agreements. Cloud is what you want it to be: In comparison to certain on-premise technologies, the Cloud doesn’t burden the enterprise while transitioning costs to operations. This means organizations can spend less time in cost and more time in innovation. Cloud brings people closer: Employees usually collaborate on projects and over email discussions, leading to cluttered inboxes. With Cloud collaboration solutions and platforms, your team can now collaborate or work in real time and on the go. They give you choices: Cloud gives multiple options for organizations to be more flexible; one such option is the multi-Cloud strategy. Multi-Cloud implementation is when organizations have multiple Cloud services running in one architecture which helps them increase flexibility and innovation possibilities. They support your goals: Cloud is the perfect partner one could hope for. From collaboration, ease of access, to being extremely economical, it has impacted how other innovations are created and scaled with the adoption of DevOps. As operations increase in scale, some organizations are adopting Cloud-native PaaS platforms to accelerate development and achieve result-oriented goals faster. If you have strong feelings for trying out our Cloud services or if you want to find ideal solutions for your IT needs, feel free to contact us. We are not running any sale on our Cloud services because you can’t put a price tag on true love; however, we might be able to get you the BEST POSSIBLE DEAL!