Australian marketing company Salmat plans to move everything it can into the cloud, following a highly successful initial implementation of cloud services.<\/b>
Australian marketing company Salmat plans to become a cloud-only operation within five years, after a project to replace highly customised on-premise systems with cloud software proved a huge success.
In 2014, the marketing giant, which has 4,000 staff across four countries, was struggling with its Oracle JD Edwards enterprise resource planning (ERP) legacy system, which required an expensive upgrade.
Instead, it moved to a cloud-based suite of software from Workday. By doing so, the company\u2019s chief technology officer (CTO) says it rid itself of expensive and time-consuming upgrades and gained a list of benefits that is \u201ctoo long\u201d to explain. It also spurred the company to set a timeframe in which to become cloud-only.
Salmat CTO David Glover tells Computer Weekly that its decision to try cloud computing was driven by its legacy system requiring an expensive upgrade and the company\u2019s need for a dedicated HR system, having been using the limited HR function in its payroll system.
The company was faced with the choice of either upgrading or replacing. At the same time the IT department was \u201cstretched to its limit\u201d.
\u201cOur analysis showed us that an upgrade would require similar effort and cost as a replacement, but it would not deliver the changes we needed,\u201d says Glover.
He says the company decided software as a service (SaaS) would be ideal going forward to free it from the expensive upgrade cycles associated with on-premise systems.
But it also wanted to focus more on supporting the business on the front line. \u201cMore than anything we wanted to shift away from managing our internal systems to focusing even more on external initiatives that would help our clients,\u201d adds Glover.<\/p>\n