Blogs
From on-premise to SaaS: a must for a safe software landscape
Date
6 June, 2024
Reading time
3min. reading time
In a time when complex IT systems have a growing role in supporting your daily logistic processes, hosting these systems yourself becomes more challenging. The costs of hosting your software solution on your own servers go through the roof. And we have not even started about the knowledge your colleagues should have to do so, the requirements to guarantee the safety of those systems, and the consequences in case of any calamities. Therefore the question is not if you move to SaaS. The question is when.
Arm yourself against cybercrime
Microsoft is ISO 27001 certified for Dynamics 365 Business Central. This is the most prominent certification for data security, reliability, and availability. When you decide to host your logistics software in the Microsoft Cloud, you standardly benefit from all these security advantages.
Up-to-date software as the primary focus
Staying up-to-date is of the utmost importance to arm yourself against any cyber security threats. For your software, as well as your hardware. In every corner of your IT landscape systems must be up-to-date not to leave a small opening for hackers and other threats.
Furthermore, besides the technical aspect, your configuration must be set up according to the latest standards. Think for example about authentication, encryption methods, hardening of your firewalls, virus scanning, etcetera. Do you have colleagues in your organization who have sufficient know-how to secure your systems?
An on-premise solution is updated every year. However, the SaaS updates to the latest version monthly. In that way, you make sure your operation is supported by the latest technology. Furthermore, the impact on your organization for each update is limited. The risks of an update – together with the time required from your IT colleagues – are limited because the step towards the latest version is smaller. In addition, security patches and hotfixes by Microsoft are published as soon as possible. Thanks to the monthly updates, risks and issues are taken care of much quicker.
Limit risks
Despite all precautions, a cyber-attack is still at risk. Therefore, it is important to think about a contingency plan in case your operation is still targeted. For example, can you restore a backup of your system at any given moment? How fast is your software up and running again? And, how vulnerable are other systems when a single application is compromised?
In the SaaS, Microsoft makes sure backups can be restored from a minute before. And, because Microsoft is ISO 27001 certified, they guarantee a backup can be restored to an operational system in case of business interruptions, failure of systems, applications, and data storage, or data loss. Besides, the SQL, application, and web server environments are redundant, minimizing the risk of downtime.
Flexibly manage labor costs
Cybercrime is not the only challenge you face as a logistics service provider. The labor shortages will keep growing and the costs for both labor and energy will fluctuate. The question is: how will you handle this? A side effect of hosting your logistics software in the SaaS is that you easily upscale or downscale the number of users. Are you going into a quiet period and want to limit your costs? Or, do you experience a peak in demand and want to add new users? Then you can change this in no time.
Take a step towards the future; switch to Microsoft SaaS.
Is your operation ready to move to the Microsoft SaaS? In this blog, we help your key users with the configuration of your cloud solution.