Bubble Technology Creates A New ERP Software Definition
It was the title of an article on the internet that brought me back to a particular article this morning, the part of it that read “Moving Beyond ERP”. How exciting this is to me. The mere fact that someone, perhaps there are many, who believe that there could possibly be something better than an ERP is truly music to my ears.
When the concept of something better became a vision in my mind, like almost everyone else, I didn’t even know what an ERP was. I doubt that the concept of ERP was even invented yet, out alone something beyond.
Over the years the vision never went away. As each new IBM mid-range operating system was introduced to the market, I tried to accomplish my dream. But it wasn’t until the mid 1990s it became possible to develop what I had in mind. The 64 bit chip and instant access disk memory were essential to developing the software architecture I was really looking for but when I saw it, I knew we were finally on our way.
The next ten years saw the evolution of a band new style of information and data storage being developed. There were no more modules. Business systems can now retain every last detail of everything they do for virtually forever, never slow down and grow in value almost indefinitely. Everything a business owner needs to know about his business, everything the business ever did is instantly accessible with instant access user tools. It is sort of like being inside a bubble with everything floating around you. It is, in essence, RAM centric computing with the user floating out there in it’s midst.
This removed virtually every problem ever associated with the concept of ERP systems. Data became integrated instead of modules. Selective functionality drives the system, not modularity. A fresh new wave of simplicity and ease of use instantly emerged. It suddenly made ERP a reality for even very small companies because it suddenly became highly affordable. It also became far faster to implement and migrate into. It was so much smoother and knew few boundaries with respect to letting companies become diverse in terms of what they want to do or where they wanted to expand there operations geographically. It was so much like the ERP we always wanted, so far beyond the traditional ERP, we branded it the unERP, a brand new ERP system definition.
So, have we moved beyond ERP?
By leaps and bounds!
The unERP as we have it to-day is built for the mid-range servers of to-day because IBM engineering allowed us to do it. More importantly the software is really built for the mid-range server of tomorrow. Someday hardware technology will catch up. But it might be a very long time.
