Vertical data management strategies

Kafka streaming data gets governance from Confluent

Apache Kafka event streaming from Confluent helps online grocery provider Instacart deliver milk to customers when they need it, by helping to power real-time inventory updates. Continue Reading

Snowflake aims at financial services with data cloud

Snowflake launches its new Data Cloud offering as it continues to expand the range of applications and capabilities for its customers, including Western Union and Capital One. Continue Reading

Kafka users detail real-time data benefits

Confluent introduces a series of new real-time data efforts as users of the open source data-streaming technology outline real-world deployment applications. Continue Reading

How parallelization works in streaming systems

Dive into this book excerpt from 'Grokking Streaming Systems' and learn the crucial role the parallelization process plays in the design of a streaming system. Continue Reading

Percona users detail open source database challenges

Speakers from Shopify and LinkedIn outline open source database cloud and security challenges and best practices at the Percona Live Online conference. Continue Reading

Test your unstructured data storage knowhow

Do you know how to manage and store unstructured data? Take our quiz to see what's required for enterprise-scale data storage, how machine learning and metadata can help and more. Continue Reading

Cloud data management, security top of mind for government

Federal government data officers grapple with cloud data management, weighing lower cost and efficiencies against security threats and vendor lock-in. Continue Reading

Cloud vs. legacy ERP systems: Tug of war intensifies for SMBs

Aging legacy ERP systems at SMBs seem to be getting plenty of scrutiny these days. Heightened consumer demands, shifting technology landscapes and relentless market disruptions, not to mention maintenance costs, technical support and obsolescence, can all conspire to keep IT managers up late at night calculating the proper time to upgrade or ditch their "old" ERP systems. Yet, for better or worse, their sleep patterns may be normalizing as decisions to migrate ERP to the cloud are increasingly drifting away from IT and landing on the laps of business leaders.

August's Business Information opens with our editor's note and advice for business and IT decision-makers who are feeling the heat: Don't be myopic when planning a flight to the cloud. The numerous ERP deployment options available to SMBs dictate that immediate company needs must be tempered with an eye toward the future.

Along those lines, our cover story examines the decision-making process when SMBs have to upgrade their legacy ERP systems or move to the cloud -- a migration that SaaS is making more palatable and popular among smaller businesses. In another feature, we drill down into vertical, industry-specific ERP technologies that allow SMBs to cost-effectively make immediate specialty upgrades to their systems.

Also in this issue, a medical device group migrated to cloud ERP primarily because of the expense of adding features and functions to its existing on-premises system. In addition, SMBs face many issues when implementing SaaS ERP operations as AI, big data analytics and smart workflow reach mission-critical levels. And statistics show that cloud ERP ranks ahead of big data analytics, data integration, AI and IoT software initiatives planned for deployment this year, while on-premises ERP packaged business apps are near the bottom of IT's grocery list of priorities.

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