Since 2015 or so, we’ve been seeing a generational shift in ERP systems away from on-premises installations to cloud-based delivery. This article explains what’s at stake not just for CIOs and IT Directors, but for those responsible for maintaining the EDI/B2B integration stack.
No one argues that modern businesses need three things to grow: speed, agility, and real-time insights. Cloud-based ERP delivery addresses those needs.
After all, you can make the best ice cream in the world but if your plant can’t quickly pivot to a new egg supplier in the event of a contamination issue, more than production schedules are at stake.
Understandably, most CIOs and IT Directors see ERP migrations as a strategic move, not just an IT upgrade. They perceive that migrating their ERP systems to the cloud carries the potential to digitally transform their organization’s competitiveness, agility, and profitability.
At the same time, ERP migrations have downstream impacts on those responsible for maintaining the business and system integration tech stack (EDI, MFT, EAI, APIs). Unfortunately, these managers are too often the last to know about an ERP migration until it’s too late to be proactively involved.
Later we’ll address how to avoid the bottlenecks and reworks that result from siloed planning. But first, let’s look at a more fundamental issue:
If an ERP migration to the cloud is so powerfully transformative, why aren’t more organizations in the middle of one right now? For one thing, according to Gartner, the process can take years with the majority of migrations taking two years to complete.
For another, migration upends custom processes, redefines existing business and system integrations, and can trigger unforeseen disruptions. If poorly managed, code and connection glitches can adversely impact finance, supply chains, and manufacturing, among other critical areas.
In this article, we’ll examine these risks while we explore the benefits the ERP industry promises to deliver with cloud-native ERPs. One point to clarify before we go on: Remedi is not an ERP vendor.
That said, our consulting and staffing services support clients in their initiatives to modernize and maintain their data integration and exchange capabilities.
During an ERP system move to the cloud, this looks like managing and mitigating the potential for migration-related disruptions. We do this by following our own and industry's best practices.
The environmental diligence, guardrails, and project experience inform how we update trading partner maps, configure and test data flows, and maintain partner and system connections.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Why ERP providers are moving to the cloud
- Why many ERP users are not ready to migrate
- Major ERP vendors shifting from on-premise to the cloud
- Impact of ERP migration on the EDI/B2B integration tech stack
- Conclusion
Why ERP Systems Are Moving to the Cloud
At one level, it’s easy to understand what’s driving the ERP industry’s push to move clients to the cloud. The desire to grow the cloud computing market.
At the same time, those companies that seek to grow their slice of the pie are promising—and for many customers delivering—the following benefits:
- Scalability and Flexibility: Unlike on-premises architecture, cloud ERPs allow dynamic scaling of resources as business needs change.
- Cost Efficiency and Lower TCO: Cloud delivery converts large upfront capital expenditures into predictable operating costs and helps avoid annual maintenance fees and hardware refreshes.
- Continuous Updates & Innovation: Cloud ERPs enable regular, incremental upgrades that bring new features, enhanced security, and innovative capabilities like AI and automation without major disruption to operations.
- Enhanced Security & Compliance: Major cloud providers offer enterprise-grade security infrastructure and compliance certifications that most businesses can’t afford to build or maintain on-prem.
- Agility & Remote Accessibility: Cloud ERPs allow global, mobile access to business systems and enable faster deployment of features or modules, driving business responsiveness and enabling expansion.
Of course, it’s senior leadership from finance, IT, and operations who must decide whether and when to take on the investment, disruption, and time commitment ERP migration to the cloud entails.
According to Remedi President Brad Loetz, “The C-Suite will ask, ‘Is this going to be good for us,’ and generally the answer is going to be yes. Is it going to be easy? Categorically that’s a no.”
Why Are Many ERP Users Not Ready to Migrate?
For all the promise of cloud ERP, many businesses remain cautious — and for good reason. Years of customizations plus tightly coupled integrations and embedded processes mean an ERP migration isn’t simply plug-and-play.
ERP isn’t just a system—it’s the operational DNA of the business. Rebuilding that DNA while keeping daily operations intact is a high-stakes commitment. One that requires patience, planning, and meticulous capital budgeting—both human and financial.
We’ve seen in our client work that even companies committed to modernization must manage competing IT priorities, limited internal expertise, and natural risk aversion. But ready or not, the shift from on-premises to cloud-based ERP systems is well underway.
Below we profile the state of play, based on the moves of a handful of players with significant ERP market share.
Who Are the Major ERP Vendors Shifting from On-Premise to the Cloud?
What follows below isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list but rather a snapshot of where the market is going, based on a representative grouping of major platforms.
SAP: SAP ECC to S/4HANA
As you may have heard, SAP is sunsetting SAP ERP 6.0, which includes SAP ERP Central Component (ECC), with mainstream maintenance ending December 21, 2027. It’s been a bit of a moving target since the first announcement but support can be extended through 2030, or in some cases until 2033 with options you can parse here.
However, even those dates are not the last word. As we were preparing this article for publication, The Register reported that enterprise software support specialist Rimini Street announced it will continue to support SAP’s ECC 6.0 until 2040.
For reasons we’ll discuss toward the end of this article, S/4HANA uptake has been slow but that isn’t a knock on the product.
if you’re curious about S/4HANA, here are some noteworthy highlights to consider – starting with the origin of the name.
For those who don’t know—and we didn’t—S/4HANA breaks down like this:
“S” stands for simple. The “4” = 4th-generation. “HANA” is an acronym for High-Performance Analytic Appliance.
So cloud-native S/4HANA is the company’s 4th generation ERP suite (ECC being the 3rd) and powered by SAP’s HANA in-memory database. Here’s where the advantages get tangible in terms of latency reduction.
S/4HANA replaces SAP’s older disk-based architecture with an in-system memory for ultra-fast processing. Data is stored directly in RAM.
This means you can access and process data in orders of magnitude faster than a disk-based system because it avoids the old-school read/write process that creates latency. So queries, calculations, and transactions can happen in real time or near real-time.
Even better, you don’t have to invest in monster truck-level servers to leverage that much RAM. You can just lease the horsepower you need for a lot less (relatively speaking) than buying and maintaining the hardware.
Technically speaking, S/4HANA can be run on-premises but doing so would negate many of its benefits. For this reason, SAP promotes a transition path to S/4HANA Cloud via its RISE with SAP subscription program. This gives customers the option of public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid deployments with lower upfront costs. Cloud deployments mean SAP handles much of the infrastructure and updates, relieving the customer’s IT burden.
SAP is positioning S/4HANA as an opportunity for business transformation, not just a technical upgrade. Given the exponential increase in speed and analytical power delivered by the HANA engine that drives all that performance, we’d have to agree the direction is more than marketing hype.
Microsoft: Dynamics AX to Dynamics 365
Anyone still on Dynamics AX is running on borrowed time in the sense that mainstream support for Dynamics AX 2012 R3 ended in October 2021, while extended support fully ended in January 2023.
For these customers, making the leap to Dynamics 365 isn’t just strategic, but essential for ongoing security and compliance. As well as strongly advised for continuity and access to updates.
What can users who haven’t migrated to Dynamics 365 yet look forward to, should they decide to make the move? These users will find significantly improved functionality and a more intuitive, role-based web-based UI.
AX was desktop-centric, whereas Dynamics 365 is cloud-native and mobile-ready. This is a boon to remote access because the ERP is accessible from anywhere with an internet connection. Thus, Dynamics 365 is more user-friendly for organizations with regional headquarters and distributed workforces.
Users can theoretically enjoy a boost in productivity in that Dynamics 365 integrates with the broader Microsoft ecosystem. For example, users can export data to Excel, run analytics in Power BI, or build low-code workflows.
For mid-sized enterprises that need agility and Microsoft compatibility, Dynamics 365 offers the potential to gain a competitive edge. Organizations who do migrate to Dynamics 365 gain access to predictive analytics, machine learning, and AI-driven insights that weren’t available with the Dynamics AX family of on-premises ERP systems.
Oracle: E-Business Suite (EBS) to Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP
In contrast to its ERP competitors, Oracle has not, at least for the foreseeable future, imposed an end-of-life deadline on E-Business Suite. “Foreseeable future” doesn’t mean forever, but with their Oracle Applications Unlimited program, the company intends to offer support for its on-premises applications at least through 2036.
The coexistence strategy makes sense. EBS was introduced in 2001 and caught on quickly with large enterprise-level customers thanks to its applications for ERP and CRM. Almost a quarter of a century later, many of them rely on heavily customized instances of EBS.
Not to mention they tend to be in highly regulated sectors (financial services, healthcare, pharmaceuticals), or globally distributed like automotive manufacturers. A forced cutover without a generous runway would risk alienating these customers, and the revenue they represent.
Which is not to say Oracle isn’t all in on Oracle Fusion Cloud. Built from the ground up as a SaaS-native platform, Fusion Cloud offers capabilities that simply aren’t possible within the EBS architecture. These include embedded AI, predictive analytics, continuous updates, and a fully integrated suite of cloud business applications.
Unlike ESB, Fusion Cloud gets regular updates and new functionality, without disruptive upgrade projects. Also, Fusion Cloud is a fully integrated suite covering Finance, HR, and Supply Chain among other mission-critical areas.
This enables smoother, faster, and more accurate operations across the board. And compared to maintaining and upgrading on-premises hardware and applications, its advantages come with a lower cost of ownership.
That said, migration is complex.
JDE (JD Edwards) Architect Craig Corson offers this cautionary insight: “Before you commit to migrating, you need to verify that you can replicate any mission-critical customized workflow from your on-premises system in the cloud-based ERP system. Customizations at the code level could be difficult in cloud-based products.”
It’s important to understand that Fusion Cloud is not a technical upgrade from EBS — it's a reimplementation. The data models, workflows, and customizations don’t port over automatically.
Migrating to Fusion Cloud means rethinking custom code, integrations, and business processes—in short, everything about how the organization conducts business.
But for companies that plan growth strategies in timescales of five to ten years, the value of future-proofing their long-range competitiveness by transitioning to Fusion Cloud will likely outweigh the relative short-term pain of migrating.
Infor M3 to Infor CloudSuite
Long known for serving distribution, service, and manufacturing industries, Infor has transitioned its M3 ERP into Infor CloudSuite. Infor CloudSuite is a SaaS-native platform hosted on AWS and is a key offering with the Infor Industry Cloud Platform.
CloudSuite retains M3’s deep industry specialization while simplifying upgrades, enabling mobile access, and embedding analytics directly into workflows. Will the offering be compelling to their on-premises customers?
For some, absolutely.
Especially mid-market manufacturers and distributors who customized their legacy ERPs out of necessity. These customers will likely welcome prebuilt industry features that translate to lower costs and fewer headaches as well as faster time to market and reduced maintenance burdens.
For those with highly unique requirements that may need customization, CloudSuite can still be a good fit.
Infor’s approach isn’t necessarily no customization. It’s less customization that’s easier to manage.
The architecture is designed to handle extensions through its Mongoose platform and API layers — which makes customization more sustainable than the brittle hard-coding of legacy systems.
Unlike some ERP vendors, Infor has not announced a formal end-of-support date for on-premises M3. Still, future innovation and feature development looks to focus squarely on CloudSuite.
Epicor: Legacy Epicor ERP to Epicor Kinetic
Epicor’s shift to the cloud centers on Kinetic, its SaaS-first ERP platform built for manufacturers, distributors, and service organizations.
Like Infor, Epicor has not issued formal end-of-support deadlines for its legacy on-prem ERP versions. But like others in the space, the company is aiming development and innovation on growing their share of the cloud market.
Kinetic introduces expanded API support, modern low-code tools, and a more flexible architecture that simplifies integrations compared to prior Epicor platforms. As with the other offerings we’ve discussed, migration typically requires reexamining legacy integrations and data models.
But many customers view this as a chance to retire rickety legacy customizations and take advantage of Epicor’s embedded industry workflows, faster deployment cycles, and continuous updates.
ERP Migration and Impact on the EDI Technology/Integrated Data Stack
It’s worth underlining here that ERP migration doesn’t happen in isolation. At Remedi we use the following analogy to apply to EDI migrations but it applies even more to ERP moves:
Migrating to a new platform in the cloud is like replacing the engine of a car while driving 70 miles per hour down the highway.
The engine may be new, but the rest of the vehicle so to speak — trading partner connections, EDI maps, and countless data flows tied to legacy ERP logic — must still function smoothly in real-time. Every change in ERP data structure, process timing, or integration endpoint can ripple through supply chains, finance, customer service, and third-party platforms.
That’s why EDI and B2B integration work can’t be an afterthought, even if the ERP migration precedes modernizing the EDI stack. Successful ERP migrations account for all those mapping and connection dependencies up front.
Conclusion
Cloud ERP promises speed, scalability, and continuous innovation — as well as lower total cost of ownership. While those promises are more than marketing fluff, here is the reality:
ERP migration means rethinking the entire integration landscape that supports operations, customers, suppliers, and trading partners. And like the punchline to the old joke, “How do you eat an elephant,” the answer is “One bite at a time.”
In some cases, clients choose to sequence their ERP and integration migrations separately to spread risk. In others, modernizing multiple systems in parallel delivers greater long-term value.
One recent example: we supported a leading sporting goods manufacturer as they migrated from BizTalk to IBM Sterling Integrator on the EDI side while simultaneously moving their ERP to JD Edwards EnterpriseOne — all as part of a coordinated modernization plan that fit their operational and financial objectives. Read the full story.
While every ERP migration introduces complexity, the larger point is this.
With proper planning — and a partner who understands both EDI and the evolving ERP landscape — companies can turn complexity into opportunity and emerge with a more resilient, more agile integration environment for the future.
Reach out if you’d like to discuss how we can help you modernize or optimize your current EDI stack, or support your EDI needs while you migrate from on-premises ERP to the cloud.
