Amitive SCM in the Cloud
Amitive is the first to deliver supply chain management (SCM) services in the cloud. SCM in the Cloud is the great leap forward product companies have long sought but technology vendors have failed to deliver. With Cloud Computing, product companies can now realize their dream of fast, flexible, affordable setup and ongoing management of their multi-enterprise business networks. SCM in the Cloud makes it simpler for product companies to manage better by taking advantage of lower cost, more flexible IT solutions for global data management, agile business process management, and cross-community decision support.
Amitive Matches Your Corporate Style and Needs
Amitive is the leader in SCM cloud computing. Amitive Unity has been designed from the ground up to provide a fast, flexible, affordable delivery model for supply chain management for companies large and small. As such, Amitive is the only SCM provider that provides product companies with a choice of cloud computing style that best matches their IT requirements and readiness now - and provides a seamless path to alternate computing as a company changes their IT portfolio or delivery structure, grows in size, or increases sophistication. Amitive supports three styles of delivery: Our Cloud, Your Cloud, Any Cloud. We think you’ll find this flexibility refreshing.
Learn more about Amitive SCM in the Cloud and our unique approach to customer-specific choices.
What is Cloud Computing?
The technology industry is rife with acronyms and seemingly complex terminology that is tough enough for IT experts to keep on top of, much less for business and supply chain experts to wade through. Indeed, buyers and sellers across every business discipline are struggling with a precise definition of Cloud and how it relates to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), but we have now reached an inflection point wherein these terms are becoming nearly household words. And, with market pundits like IDC Corp declaring that the cloud computing market could reach $42 billion by 2012 , this term will not be going away any time soon. So let's strip out the marketing hype and define "Cloud" at its most basic level:
Simply put, the "cloud" is a metaphor for the Internet-based tools used by a multitude of diverse customers, at any time, from any location. Components of cloud computing include software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), and infrastructure as a service (IaaS).
Click Here to read the Cloud Computing Primer
Why SCM in the Cloud?
The elephant in the room is that while supply chain communities are rapidly advancing with the new business model of multi-enterprise business networks, supporting technology provided by traditional supply chain software vendors (e.g. SAP, Oracle, i2 and the like) has lagged in its ability to support this community model. The reality is that supply chain trading partners work on different SCM software, ERP, and CRM systems. Because of this heterogeneity, their collaboration mechanisms are mostly Excel spreadsheets, phone-fax. Clearly trading partners would prefer a homogenous way to work together across companies and borders. In the new C-SCM model all business process data needs to reside in a distributed format across manufacturers, supply partners, logistics providers and end user customers.
Community Supply Chain Management (C-SCM) requires:
Common Platform
You have to get all the team on a common platform if you want to enable seamless processes and collaboration.
Simple, Flexible Processes
Despite vendors' claims, there's no such thing as software "best practices". You need to define how your community will do business and then be nimble to the ever-changing shape and size of the supply chain community.
Integration On-ramp
To speak the common language of the community, you're going to need to easily translate the "tongue" spoken by each participating partners' systems. This is a must-have to create and sustain a supply chain community.
Scalability, Availability, Security
Supply chain management is mission critical so your partners and you need to be confident in the platform for sharing precious information.
Cloud computing is the catalyst enabling the long sought-after great leap forward of technology to centralize information, bridge the process gaps, create real-time, cross-community visibility and, therefore, enable the highly efficient product velocity needed for global business networks to effectively serve their ever-more-demanding customers better than their competitors' business network.
Today's Cloud Computing model goes far beyond the finite "point to point" connectivity of EDI, and it is far easier for all parties to run and maintain than either EDI or a corporate portal (which may be tied to a vendor, or home-grown) which typically focuses on merely exposing information in a secure manner, rather than actually managing an inter-company transaction. And, unlike the B2B marketplaces in which low cost and speedy delivery was intended to trump long-standing business relationships, today's cloud-enabled SCM lets companies define a unique business style and partner set, while for the first time facilitating the right exchange of data and transactions within the context of this new peer to peer C-SCM approach over the crushing master/slave relationships still prevalent.
Business Benefits
While the IT benefits of Cloud Computing present shear advantage, let's get back to the business evaluation of potential for improvement of business activities and financial performance.
C-SCM Enablement
Cloud Computing enables today's supply chain business operating model — the multi-enterprise business network — with real-time, cross-community visibility. Now product companies can move from "management-by-spreadsheet" to true community supply chain management.
Seamless Business Process Management:
Now processes can be conducted seamlessly and efficiently and individual and community decisions can be made faster based on a single source of truth. and geographies.
Lower Costs
Operating improvements the benefit of lower costs of leveraging shared services. And now a supply chain community has the flexibility to grow and contract to meet the needs of an entire business community, depending on product mix, market conditions, etc.
Agility, Scalability
The shape of the community can morph as well with the flexibility to frequently and easily change the shape of business processes supporting products, partners
These operating improvements contribute to cut costs, free working capital, speed innovative products to market, and change quickly to the volatility of energy, demand, and credit complicating the already complex world of supply chain management.
IT Benefits
What Cloud Computing does and how it does it are great, but again, is there fundamental value add being created or is this simply a different way of providing and accessing IT services? The good news is that there's significant, sustainable value being created via Cloud Computing:
Simpler, Faster
Cloud Computing enabled services are simpler and faster to deploy. They're typically provisioned, up, and running in a few days.
Subscription vs CapEx
In contrast to daunting upfront capital expenses, typically based on a lifetime estimate of usage, the better model here is low monthly payments (subscription) and pay only for what you use.
Strategic vs Maintenance IT
Now you can focus IT on more strategic activities as Cloud Computing doesn't eat up valuable IT resources or budget (nothing to install or maintain).
Business Your Way
The Cloud offers latest functionality, frequent upgrades and customizable use, benefits that are at odds with each other in the traditional software model.
Power & Efficiency Through Leverage
The Cloud encourages more standard IT and it drastically simplifies sharing of systems and information.
LEARN MORE ABOUT AMITIVE AND CLOUD COMPUTING
Read the seminal "Amitive SCM in the Cloud" whitepaper
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Read the "Amitive SCM in the Cloud: Catalyst for the Great Leap Forward in SCM" Whitepaper
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