Rather than adopting the "cathedral method" of IT infrastructure, a growing number of manufacturers are entrusting critical enterprise applications to the hosted model. Both AMR Research and Gartner are projecting growth of the software-as-a-service (SaaS) market to be twice as fast as the overall enterprise applications market through 2011.

According to on-demand ERP provider QAD, there are 12 major benefits to this software model for its manufacturing customers:

1. IT costs can be trimmed across the enterprise
2. Risks can be mitigated
3. Improved management of IT talent
4. Faster go-live with short time-to-value interval can be realized
5. Minimal effort needed to plan and execute implementations
6. Additional hardware infrastructure is not required
7. Corporate standards and version compatibility are more easily ensured
8. Significant reduction in local resource allocation can be realized
9. Easier mobility and scalability
10. Capital expenditures are reduced
11. A simple, cost-effective upgrade path can be rolled out
12. Manufacturers can devote more focus to true core competencies (such as manufacturing)

See Also

• Callaway Improves Long Game
• Hunt Your Own Head
• Garbage In, Garbage Out
• The Dilemma of the Ultra-Connected