Cloud computing keeps small businesses from picking up trouble

Small and medium-sized enterprises have been worried about their inability to pay for the IT services they need because of the advent of cloud computing, and even small wineries can already enjoy IT services. Lan Song, an analyst at the IDC Institute, argues that companies need to weigh in order to use the SaaS solution in a terminal market: Customers typically accept only more common scenarios, but few providers offer solutions to specific industries. But if these companies turn to custom solutions, a significant increase in costs is clearly not a cost-effective option.

The cost and customization options are very difficult for the user. "Cloud computing has changed the hard choices between cost and customization," says CEO Pat Oates, chief executive of the Wine Management System (WMS), a three-year Wine Management Bae.

VMS offer SaaS solutions that provide a complex technology and process solution for tracking, automating and optimizing wine brewing in wineries

"In the United States, there are more than 5,000 wineries, but they are small wineries, there is basically no winery can pay the annual 20000-40000 dollars of traditional customer/server-style winery management software maintenance costs," Oates said, "We can charge users 200 dollars a month, So they don't have to use the built-in FoxPro or Excel apps. ”

The tracking technology of brewing process

VMS have a wide range of customers, with a small number of wineries producing 2000 cartons of wine a year, and large annual production of tens of thousands of cartons of wineries. Wineries need to track and report on the production and packaging of wines, in addition to tracking and managing customers, incentives, marketing plans and other marketing.

"Every winery that produces alcohol needs to keep track of the chemicals added, even have to record when to add, what to do is the fusion of wine, the number of wine and fusion of wine and the name of the bottle cap and cap plug of the lot will be recorded, tracking records of a large number of information, but also to organize it into a spreadsheet form for storage. ”

Finally, you need to generate a report that includes all ingredients in the wine, tax and Trade Bureau packaging, as well as corks, caps and bottles. These data are all for better tracking records. Usually these records are recorded in Excel, most small wineries do this, but they are bothered because these applications are not based on trading systems.

Oates systems are built on Java, DB2, and WebSphere to automatically track the growth of grapes, inventory management and the management of products, bottling and wine clubs, but there is a lack of flexibility in providing customers with the ability to analyze and report on data in a flexible manner.

"Winemakers are a very stubborn crowd, and we show them when we finish the report, they always show that it's not what they want, they want to see something different." "Oates said.

Under economic pressure, VMS were unable to build an analytical system on their own, so VMS opted to establish a partnership with BI (business intelligence) software developer Pivotlink to develop a reporting/Analysis SaaS interface embedded in VMS.

Oates revealed that his technical background was IBM technology, so he chose to use Cognos, but this is too expensive for most small winery customers.

Oates told reporters: Pivotlink logo and interface in the VMS application is visible, but most of the user's wisdom that it is only a VMS system in a reporting function, they do not care about the service provider.

Because of the large size of the protocol with Pivotlink, the cost of VMS at the beginning was very low and the customer base was relatively small, but the cost of VMs began to rise when the customer base expanded.

As with other SaaS-dependent enterprises, the winery also needs to choose a reliable service provider, as well as legal contracts, including a description of the level of service and compensation for potential risks, analysts said. With proper use, SaaS can help the winery focus on its own product and profit growth, not technology.

Oates finally said: "The number and growth rate of the winery is very alarming, there are 130 wineries in India, Texas and Oregon, there are more than 100 new wineries in Washington each year, Virginia is growing very fast, we have a lot of harvest in California, but good wine all over the country are produced." "(Original: Wine meets cloud:how a SaaS App bottles Sweet BI)