Top 10 Reasons to Host ERP in the Azure Cloud

By now you’ve heard countless arguments about why moving your ERP solution to the cloud is the smartest decision your business can make. Once you’ve agreed that it is time to move from on-premises to a cloud solution, the question next becomes which cloud solution do you turn to? There are a myriad of cloud provider choices available, but we strongly believe that the most beneficial cloud provider solution lies with Microsoft’s Azure platform.

It may seem obvious that we’re pushing for Azure since we are a Microsoft Partner, and thus a provider of the Azure platform and software. However, at Sikich, we don’t just recommend Azure because we sell it; we sell it because we recommend it. We recommend it because it is the best cloud solution available. It is the best cloud solution available because of its unparalleled business benefits.

Top 10 Reasons Why Azure is the Best for Hosting ERP

Incomparable Global Reach

If your organization is spread out all over the globe, on-premises solutions simply won’t cut it next to a cloud platform. Microsoft breaks their Azure services up into 30 regions, each with multiple datacenters. All 30 regions are connected by Microsoft’s Private network.

In the US alone, Azure has 10 regions of service. Eight are public regions, and two are government regions. Four more regions are in progress, with two for the Department of Defense.

Within these 30 regions contains millions of servers (and growing), over 100 datacenters (and growing), and enough fiber to travel to the moon and back three times. No matter how far your global reach travels, Microsoft Azure will be able to accommodate.

Incredible Scalability

The Azure platform isn’t only for large businesses with a vast global reach. It’s completely scalable for whatever size your business is now and whatever size it becomes in the future. We’ve set up Azure cloud solutions for small offices, companies without infrastructure, companies that are concerned about the availability of their applications, and seasonal business models. No matter the size and reach of your business, Azure can be scaled up or down to meet your unique business needs.

Elasticity with that Scalability

Azure allows for companies scale up and scale down as needed as well. You can also scale out with Azure, meaning that you can add more machines with the same profile. Scaling up adds more resources to a current configuration. Either scaling up or scaling out can be done with Azure virtual machines, manually or automatically.

Scaling out is ideal for businesses running farms of servers. Scaling up or down are what most businesses need. With scaling up, you can bring more memory and processing to a critical machine. Thanks to the speed of Azure’s scalability, you can scale up or down your platform service within minutes.

Speed

As you may have gathered from the point above, one of Azure’s greatest benefits is its speed. Azure outpaces on-premise solutions and other cloud providers across three key areas:

• deployment,
• operation, and
• scalability.

It takes barely any time at all to deploy the Azure cloud or scale it up or down. As for operation itself, it’s faster than any on-premises solution can hope to provide.

Quick ROI and Ongoing Savings

At the outset, Azure is not exactly cheaper than setting up a private cloud server. However, the ROI is far greater than it can be with on-premises or a private cloud solution. For example, businesses can test new solutions with Azure before fully implementing them. In addition, businesses can tactically scale these solutions in areas that provide the optimal outcomes.

Since you can scale, up, down, or out, your business can tailor the costs of the platform to what it currently needs.

Also, the cloud eliminates the need for costly on-site IT maintenance. Microsoft will handle all of the cloud maintenance as well as tech support.

Productivity Boost

Microsoft guarantees 99.9% uptime with a fully managed cloud infrastructure. Therefore, your business will experience

• a greatly reduced downtime,
• greater IT efficiency,
• and overall a better experience for both your IT department and end users.

With all of these in place, everyone will be far more productive in the long run.

Mobility

Since going mobile is practically required in this day and age for productivity, businesses need an ERP solution that will not only allow for mobile access, but also one that ensures their sensitive data will be secure as well. Businesses also need a mobile solution that will streamline the user experience from anywhere. With the Azure platform, it’s extremely easy to set up streamlined remote accessibility, and one that is secure to Microsoft’s standards.

Security

Speaking of security, Azure enables easy management for user access and creating additional layers of protection. Therefore, you will be able to

• securely manage remote access and logins,
• protect against advanced targeted attacks, and
• form a contingency plan against ransomware.

In the case of mobile security, the Azure Single Sign-on feature allows users to remotely access their relevant platforms without using complex passwords. The IT department can also restrict these controls even further, such as by location and/or device.

Compliance

Another huge risk to your business other than unexpected downtimes are compliance issues. With Azure in place, businesses can manage security across all of the hybrid cloud workloads in one console as well as get instant insight into priority security issues. Azure allows you to

• centrally manage policies to ensure compliance, and
• ensure your apps in the cloud are always secure and compliant thanks to regular cloud infrastructure updates, and
• automatically back up your data to geo-redundant datacenters.

The latter is especially helpful in the case of natural or man-made disasters.

Backup and Disaster Recovery

In the case of natural or even man-made disasters, you be rest assured that your data is safe with Azure’s automatic backups to geo-redundant datacenters. Azure’s recovery options also include monitoring, protecting, and replicating virtual machines for a streamlined recovery.

No matter what risks are thrown your way, Azure’s cloud platform will give your business the peace of mind that it will run seamlessly, speedily, and securely across all possible nodes of access.

Contact us today to get started moving your ERP solution to the Microsoft Azure cloud platform or to ask us any additional questions.