Move all enterprise software to cloud over weekend: TechOne boss

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 22 February 2012 12:35

TechnologyOne clients will soon be able to move all their legacy enterprise software from the company into the cloud within the space of a few days, according to TechOne founder and executive chairman Adrian Di Marco. What's more, the TechOne boss expects all the company's customers will have moved entirely into the cloud within 10 years.

Earlier today, speaking to audience of about 1000 delegates at the company's 3-yearly Evolve conference, Mr Di Marco detailed the TechnologyOne cloud strategy simply titled TechnologyOne Cloud.

In broad terms, the strategy involves making TechOne's Ci enterprise software suite available as cloud applications to existing customers. All of the applications will be available through web browsers via a TechnologyOne app store, while some will also be available as platform specific apps on smart mobile devices such as the iPhone, iPad, as well as Android devices.

Mr Di Marco told iTWire that the first browser based enterprise apps will be available within 3 months, while some iOS apps are already available, with Android apps expected to be available in "3 or 4 months".

According to Mr Di Marco, the transition to the cloud for TechnologyOne clients will be painless and could take only days, depending on how comfortable the client is with moving their data off premises.

"The transition from our traditional infrastructure to the cloud could be done over the weekend; it would take as long as it takes to upload the data and as the applications will be exactly the same no retraining will be required," said Mr Di Marco.

"However, until clients get comfortable with putting everything into the cloud, they will probably want to run applications in parallel with their existing infrastructure and that may take a few months."

Mr Di Marco said monolithic enterprise software companies like SAP and Oracle cannot replicate the seamless transition of TechnologyOne into the cloud for their clients because of their business models.

"Their model is to use companies like Accenture to implement software installations and because of that they have no idea of what they have done in terms of customisation for their clients," said Mr Di Marco.

"Oracle wants to go to the cloud but all of their clients are non-standard so it will involve massive upgrades for each client."

Under the TechnologyOne Cloud program, clients will pay a yearly service fee for access to their applications which will based on their current annual software license fee.