Nearly one in five (21% in the United States and 18% globally) of manufacturing IT directors say their organization’s IT infrastructure is entirely cloud-based, while 45% in the United States and 38% worldwide have moved most of their IT infrastructure to the cloud, according to a survey commissioned by NiceLabel and carried out by Loftware. Surprisingly, 13% only have little to no cloud integration.
“Both a lack of legacy systems integration and performance issues can be addressed by a modern cloud system. With regard to the former, when it comes to labeling, manufacturers need to integrate seamlessly in the cloud with other key industry platforms, including enterprise resource planning (ERP) and warehouse management systems (WMS). Cloud-to-cloud integrations can typically be done via cloud APIs, whereas cloud-to-on-premise integrations require a proxy on-premise. The use of out-of-the-box connectors for most major business systems can also help achieve a rapid integration with other platforms,” says Ken Moir, VP marketing, NiceLabel.
“Manufacturers can also enhance performance levels for labeling in the cloud by using a printing application or integrating with a business system,” adds Moir. “Both these ’executables’ actually run on-premise utilizing local CPU processing power. This architecture provides the benefits of a cloud-based label management system combined with the performance of on-premise printing.”
From NiceLabel:
- More than a quarter (27%) of IT directors in manufacturing globally are worried about slow performance when running applications in the cloud, while 26% note a lack of integration with legacy systems as a key obstacle.
- 62% in the United States (and 50% globally) say they would be “much more likely to move their applications to the cloud“ as a result.
- And, 80% of IT directors surveyed expect their organization to increase investment in IT systems like ERP, MES and WMS by more than 25% over the next three years.
