Not that surprising to read this piece about migration of ERP solutions to the cloud.

When a company completes the first roll out of its new ERP solution the effort is only beginning and the costs continue to roll.  Significant internal resources will be dedicated to supporting the solution, managing change, supporting users, further roll outs to other parts of the business.  The further rollouts can themselves be significant capex events.

Moving ERP to the cloud can be a combination of infrastructure, platform, software and business processes.  But must be attractive to companies if you can get the cost model right:

• Move to variable costs (pay for what you use)
• Replace capex with opex
• Focus on core competencies
• Reduce dependence on/ exposure to small number of key skilled personnel