ERP Comparison Guide for your Business Lifecycle

ERP Comparison Guide for your Business Lifecycle

THE KEY FACTORS IN CHOOSING ERP AND A CLOSE LOOK AT CLOUD (NETSUITE)

AND ON-PREMISE (SAGE 100 ERP) OFFERINGS

CONTENTS

Who Should Use this Guide?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 What You Will Learn in this Guide. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 What is the Cloud? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 The Key Factors to Evaluate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Deployment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Technology and Architecture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Security. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Demographics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Capabilities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Support. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 The True Costs of Technology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Pricing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

ERP Comparison Guide for Your Business Lifecycle 2

Who Should Use this Guide?

This guide's purpose is to help you in the often-complicated process of making decisions about the business technology that will be used for your company's future. You may be in the early stages of evaluating a new system that will help you meet your goals, or doing preliminary research on what the market offers today. This guide is for you if you:

? Manage a new enterprise or new division of an existing company with an immediate need for gaining control of operations and financials

? Must upgrade an out-dated accounting, ERP, or eCommerce package ? Have outgrown your current application capabilities ? Have many spreadsheets and manual tasks managing your business ? Are planning a joint venture, a new product launch, or are spinning off a new location or division ? Have global divisions that require capabilities that you don't have in your existing system This guide is meant to serve as one of the first steps in your research ? to let you know what questions to ask, and get you started with some answers. To help you make an informed choice, we feature NetSuite and Sage 100 ERP as our sample products in these comparisons. NetSuite is a cloud-based accounting, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) solution. The company was founded in 1998, is headquartered in Silicon Valley, and has over 12,000 companies as customers. For more information about NetSuite, please visit our website. Sage 100 ERP is one of several accounting/ERP solutions from Sage North America, a division of The Sage Group PLC based in the United Kingdom. Sage North America has over 3.2 million customers across the US and Canada. For more information about Sage 100 ERP, please visit our website.

What You Will Learn in this Guide

The goal of this and other guides in this series is to provide unbiased information comparing various types and brands of business management (such as ERP and CRM systems) on the market today. You will learn to identify the key considerations and advantages in several categories, and learn more about how to find a solution that best fits your unique situation.

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Informed buyers should consider the following factors when evaluating systems:

? Deployment ? Technology ? Security ? Demographics

? Capabilities ? Support ? The True Costs of Technology ? Pricing

When it comes to ERP systems, the conversation today starts with the delivery or deployment method. On-premise solutions like Sage 100 promise robust feature sets, customization capabilities, and centralized control of systems and data. Cloud systems like NetSuite offer agility, scalability, and lower short-term costs.

The Rate of Cloud Adoption

What is your Organization's level of cloud adoption?

Percent of respondents

90%

72%

21% Piloting

38%

21% 13% Today

+33% +215%

28% Adopting

41% Substantially implemented

Three Years

In a survey of 572 global business and technology leaders conducted by IBM, almost three-fourths of respondents had implemented cloud in their organizations as of 2011 ? 90% expect to implement the cloud by 2014.

Source: 2011 IBM Institute for Business Value/Economist Intelligence Unit Cloud-Enabled Business Model Survey.

What is the Cloud?

With so much focus on the cloud today, what are the pros and cons of cloud, Hybrid, On-Premise, and other delivery models? What do those buzzwords mean? What types of solutions are offered for each? The major types of delivery models for IT as a whole are detailed below, along with their positive and negative characteristics.

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DELIVERY MODELS

Deployment Type

Characteristics

Payment Method

Pros

Cons

Example

Infrastructure as a service, IaaS (or Hardware as a Service, HaaS)

Organizations outsource equipment, including servers, networking components, and hardware to a service provider who owns and maintains it. Can be on client's premise, or hosted for clients.

Subscription

Cost savings in initial start- up, scalability, outsourced responsibility for IT support and maintenance, often quicker to get up and running.

Security considerations, ongoing software management is often still a factor, requires reliable internet connection.

Dell, data centers

Platform as a service, PaaS

PaaS providers offer a platform including operating systems, databases, and web servers for users of purchased or internally developed applications.

Subscription

Cost savings on infrastructure, operating systems, and systems support; scalability, ease of maintenance, fast to get up and running.

Potential security and downtime considerations, requires reliable data centers, flexibility may not meet the needs of users whose requirements evolve rapidly.

Windows Azure, Google App Engine, Amazon Web Services

Software as a service, SaaS

SaaS providers install and manage their software applications and associated infrastructure for their clients. Users access applications from a browser on a desktop, laptop, tablet, or smart phone.

Subscription

Lower start-up costs, infrastructure hardware cost savings, scalability, low maintenance, fast to deploy, more capabilities available than many single businesses could afford to purchase on their own.

Security and downtime considerations, requires reliable internet connection.

NetSuite, SugarCRM, Gmail, Facebook, LinkedIn

Hybrid Vendor-hosted

Users have some applications running on in-house servers and use some applications in the cloud.

Subscription, one-time payment, services costs, annual maintenance fees.

Allows the best of both worlds: onpremise for more security- sensitive applications, and cloud for applications that require a lot of database updating and maintenance, i.e. sales tax jurisdiction tables.

Security considerations, software management is still a factor, requires reliable internet connection. Multiple databases can create issues, when trying to maintain version compatibilities between different systems.

Sage 100 ERP with online sales tax management automated shipping, credit card payment processing solutions, EDI processing services, mobility access applications in the cloud.

Software is installed in a data center, accessed over the internet from a remote location and managed by a vendor.

Upfront license purchase may be required; subscription fees for the hosting service.

User owns the software and data; fast to deploy; low maintenance.

User does not control the environment.

Sage 100 hosted via ASPs.

Private cloud

Companies establish data centers within their own firewalls, and use virtualization on the client end for access.

One-time payment, services costs, annual maintenance fees.

Greater data and security control.

Significant upfront investment. Requires in-house IT staff to maintain.

Sage 100 on Applianz servers.

On-Premise

All IT infrastructure, hardware, network, and associated infrastructure software, along with application software are onsite at the user's facility.

One-time hardware, software payment upfront, implementation services costs, annual phone support and maintenance fees.

Greater data and security control.

Significant upfront investment. Requires in-house or outsourced IT services support to maintain.

Sage 100 ERP traditional workstation or Client-Server platform installations

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