As Singapore transitions into coexisting with Covid, it has become increasingly important for businesses to remain flexible and adaptable to dynamic work environments, primarily the possibility of switching to work-from-home with little to no business interruption. 

If you are reviewing your current hardware and infrastructure and is considering migrating your SAP Business One application to the cloud, please read on to find out the factors you have to consider. 

1. Are you ready to move from on-premise to cloud?

On-premise hosting has been around for a long time. Traditionally on-premise, or physical servers provided a stable connection for an office, an important benefit in an era when internet coverage and speeds were more modest.  

Typically, an on-premise server can serve you adequately for 3 to 5 years before requiring a replacement or an upgrade.

Today, more companies are moving to cloud hosting for a variety of reasons such as to enable remote access (for staff to access the system on-the-go/ working-from-home), reduce hardware replacement cost, as well as enjoy better flexibility and scalability.

2. Amount of resources required on cloud

First, it is important to determine the resources needed for your business. This depends on a number of factors:

• Number of users accessing the SAP application
• Number of company databases (including test databases)
• Transaction volume 
• Number of files/ attachments
• Add-ons
• Extent of integration with 3rd party platforms 

Having these information on hand will ease the discussion process, as your cloud provider will be able to advise you on your requirements and provide suggestions on how to optimise resource usage. 

3. Private vs. Public Cloud Hosting

Private cloud hosting provides a company with a dedicated Virtual Machine that is only accessible to this specific company. With a dedicated VM, you can decide when you wish to upgrade your SAP Business One version as well as the timing of your updates to avoid any impact on business operations. 

Public cloud hosting is a multi-tenanted architecture environment in which the Virtual Machine is shared among a few tenant companies. Public cloud hosting provides similar security level as private cloud hosting as security controls are in place to protect each company’s privacy and security. However, you will need to follow the cloud operators’ schedule on when to upgrade your SAP application.

In terms of pricing, public cloud hosting has a lower price point.

4. Committed uptime by cloud provider

Most cloud providers in the market have a committed uptime of 95% or 99% – higher uptime is better as it means that the cloud provider has in place proper data protection measures and fail-over setup. Adaptus provides an expected uptime of 99.5%.

5. Scalability 

With a traditional on-premise server, if your data volume increases due to a business expansion, you will be required to replace your server with another server of higher specifications and be subjected to a lead time according to supply chain conditions. In comparison, if your system is hosted on cloud, you can request for additional storage or resources at a moment’s notice. Your cloud hosting contract will be priced according to the actual resources you need – this ensures pricing flexibility and mitigates supply chain risks.     

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Moving your SAP Business One system to the cloud is a significant move which involve many considerations; we hope that this post has provided you with some ideas of how and where to start with your cloud migration.

If you would like to have a further discussion with our team, do contact us for a no-obligations discussion.