One of the things that is coming up in conversations with customers more and more is the question as to whether they need to own, install and maintain both software and hardware. If you have a large user base, there is the luxury of being able to have absolute control over your own systems. But even then, in these cash-strapped times, owning carries its own overhead:
- Capital outlay
- Peripherals and infrastructure costs
- Administration overhead
- Lack of flexibility
- Internal resources required
- Security
- Disaster recovery, Backups
- Disposal issues for old hardware
For SMEs, the need to maintain in-house expertise is a major item and how can you justify the cost of full DM?
If you wanted to implement Oracle EBS for example, the lead time for the hardware may stretch to months while the search for qualified DBAs* and assorted techies could take even longer. If you wanted to get up and running in the short term, the most effective way is to get the entire solution (hardware and software) hosted externally. If you really wanted to take ownership back into the organisation at a future date, the option remains open. This is the premise behind cloud computing…
For more information, see the Netstore site.
* specialist Oracle Apps DBAs are more expensive than standard DBAs…
