In 2010, HfS Research and the London School of Economics surveyed over 1000 organizations about their outlook on Cloud Computing in the business software sphere. The results clearly show that top level executives are buying into the concept of the cloud in record numbers. What’s interesting is that CEOs and COOs appear to be even more excited about this technology than CIOs are. They view the benefits of outsourcing portions of their IT infrastructure management and tapping into the Best of Breed applications available as the result of low-cost software development as key for promoting more cost-effective business practices.
This doesn’t mean IT executives are hesitant about adopting cloud-based software. In fact, according the HfS survey results, 1 out of 3 CIOs anticipate using a significant portion of their IT budget on cloud based business services in the coming year. Mid level IT managers are a little less eager to see their organizations make the switch. This might be because the need for employers to keep managers on staff to supervise low level IT personnel will decrease as more day-to-day maintenance functions are outsourced to cloud providers. Organizations may be looking to pare down their IT staff to a few good strategic planners and savvy trouble shooters. This, in turn, may make things easier for HR by reducing the demand for a steady stream of IT hires (a field where demand often outstrips availability of talent).
What Do Leaders Find Attractive about Cloud Services?
Both general business executives and CIOs are attracted to the cloud for many reasons. However, interest from non-IT executives is particularly high when it comes to the following benefits:
• Faster implementation of mission critical, best in class software applications that would have been unavailable or too difficult to access using a legacy system
• Less reliance on IT to create custom applications that support business goals
• Money spent on IT actually being used to improve business processes throughout the organization
Emerald Software Group has been keeping up with the latest trend by making applications such as Universal Onboarding available on one of the industry’s leading cloud platforms. You can read more about the benefits of the cloud approach to onboarding over at Chuck’s blog.
Showing posts with label Cloud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cloud. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Friday, January 7, 2011
Buffet Style Product Selection A Benefit Of Web 3.0 HR Software
Robert Grey at Human Resources Magazine offers an in-depth look at cloud computing and how it will impact both software vendors and purchasers in HR. One area where web 3.0 applications may come out ahead of traditionally licensed suite software is in the way services can easily be split up and sold separately. The big names in HR software still focus on providing entire suites of applications. That’s a selling point for some employers. They want one-stop shopping for all their HR software and believe having it all sourced from a single vendor will make it easier to maintain. The up side for these vendors is that they capture all of an HR customer’s business and can sell them a bundled package that includes all (or most) of their applications.
Why Pay for What You Won’t Use?
The downside (from Grey’s perspective), is that many HR departments don’t really need all the modules they are being sold. So, they may end up paying for stuff they really won’t use. This doesn’t line up well with the drive toward lean and streamlined processes in other areas of business. As HR begins to rethink its software budget in light of which precise products it really requires, the perceived wisdom of purchasing a whole system may change dramatically.
Some traditional HR software suppliers are catching on to this by permitting HR clients to pick and choose from among their product offerings. However, this has only made it more apparent that the individual components of some of these suites lack the type of functionality HR is looking for. This leaves the field open for best of breed web 3.0 HR software providers to serve this growing customer base. Some employers may even choose to invest in their own PaaS platform that permits IT to develop specialized HR applications internally at low cost. Grey doesn’t see cloud base applications as replacing core HR systems. However, the future looks very bright for niche solutions such as new hire onboarding that can be readily interfaced with an HRMS.
Why Pay for What You Won’t Use?
The downside (from Grey’s perspective), is that many HR departments don’t really need all the modules they are being sold. So, they may end up paying for stuff they really won’t use. This doesn’t line up well with the drive toward lean and streamlined processes in other areas of business. As HR begins to rethink its software budget in light of which precise products it really requires, the perceived wisdom of purchasing a whole system may change dramatically.
Some traditional HR software suppliers are catching on to this by permitting HR clients to pick and choose from among their product offerings. However, this has only made it more apparent that the individual components of some of these suites lack the type of functionality HR is looking for. This leaves the field open for best of breed web 3.0 HR software providers to serve this growing customer base. Some employers may even choose to invest in their own PaaS platform that permits IT to develop specialized HR applications internally at low cost. Grey doesn’t see cloud base applications as replacing core HR systems. However, the future looks very bright for niche solutions such as new hire onboarding that can be readily interfaced with an HRMS.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Newest HR Software Terminology – PaaS
Software as a Service (SaaS) has become practically a household name in the HR industry. However, there is always a new development just around the corner and it’s hard to keep up with the technical lingo. The latest concept making its way into HR software vendor’s vocabularies is PaaS. Platform as a Service refers to more than the practice of offering a specific application over the web. With PaaS, Web 3.0 is in the mix. Software companies develop and run instances of their applications on the cloud computing platform. These resources are made available as a service by companies such as Amazon. Client data is hosted, stored, and transferred using virtual servers (this part of the picture is sometimes referred to as IaaS or Infrastructure as a Service).
What’s Different for HR?
The actual applications are still accessible via the internet just like traditional SaaS. The end user’s experience of the software doesn’t really change with a PaaS approach. However, there are other issues that can impact HR software choices from a strategic perspective. With virtualized servers and highly flexible platforms, it is possible to run an entire HRIS suite in the cloud environment. What was once the province of niche applications is becoming a standard offering from even the largest HR software vendors. IT and HR will need to collaborate closely to determine if and when moving the management of HR data and processes to the cloud is beneficial from a cost, maintenance, and security perspective.
The ability of smaller, niche HR software providers to serve clients is also enhanced with the advent of PaaS. Now, it is possible for them to run as many instances of an application as needed without increasing their costs for maintaining a permanent infrastructure. This server space and the computing capability being used can be scaled up and down practically instantaneously (which is why Amazon’s service offering is called the Elastic Compute Cloud). The ability to provide a separate instance of an application for each client also means SaaS vendors can offer greater customization without significantly adding to costs. Vendors can also serve a larger client base with rapidly changing capacity requirements.
Coming Soon?
There is speculation that Web 3.0 will make using multiple SaaS products together much simpler as interfacing between various programs becomes more commonplace. The popularity of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in software development has already moved web-based programs in this direction. SOA makes applications more likely to be interoperable as a basic design feature instead of an afterthought. This advance will create more flexibility for HR departments that want to use many Best of Breed niche products for the highest level of functionality in all areas of human capital management. HR might eventually have the option of ditching outdated suite software that contains applications that aren’t needed or used and simply cherry picking the best tool for each job. Of course, at Emerald Software Group, we’re already offering Universal Onboarding as a PaaS option for our clients. It’s a great place to start!
What’s Different for HR?
The actual applications are still accessible via the internet just like traditional SaaS. The end user’s experience of the software doesn’t really change with a PaaS approach. However, there are other issues that can impact HR software choices from a strategic perspective. With virtualized servers and highly flexible platforms, it is possible to run an entire HRIS suite in the cloud environment. What was once the province of niche applications is becoming a standard offering from even the largest HR software vendors. IT and HR will need to collaborate closely to determine if and when moving the management of HR data and processes to the cloud is beneficial from a cost, maintenance, and security perspective.
The ability of smaller, niche HR software providers to serve clients is also enhanced with the advent of PaaS. Now, it is possible for them to run as many instances of an application as needed without increasing their costs for maintaining a permanent infrastructure. This server space and the computing capability being used can be scaled up and down practically instantaneously (which is why Amazon’s service offering is called the Elastic Compute Cloud). The ability to provide a separate instance of an application for each client also means SaaS vendors can offer greater customization without significantly adding to costs. Vendors can also serve a larger client base with rapidly changing capacity requirements.
Coming Soon?
There is speculation that Web 3.0 will make using multiple SaaS products together much simpler as interfacing between various programs becomes more commonplace. The popularity of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) in software development has already moved web-based programs in this direction. SOA makes applications more likely to be interoperable as a basic design feature instead of an afterthought. This advance will create more flexibility for HR departments that want to use many Best of Breed niche products for the highest level of functionality in all areas of human capital management. HR might eventually have the option of ditching outdated suite software that contains applications that aren’t needed or used and simply cherry picking the best tool for each job. Of course, at Emerald Software Group, we’re already offering Universal Onboarding as a PaaS option for our clients. It’s a great place to start!
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