Bytes Scores a First with Launch of Full Municipal ERP via the Cloud

Bytes Systems Integration has scored a first with the launch of a cloud version of its SAMRAS (South African Municipal Resource Administration System) enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

“Unlike most of the other so-called ‘ERP in the cloud’ offerings at present, we are offering the full version of SAMRAS via the cloud,” notes Brian Brougham-Cook, general manager: SAMRAS at Bytes Systems Integration. “Conventional ERP solutions with their massive databases struggle to provide acceptable speed via the Internet, but SAMRAS’s streamlined architecture makes it ideally suited for the cloud environment.

SAMRAS is a locally developed and well-established ERP system that is used by six out of the 10 most productive municipalities in the 2011 Municipal Productivity Index. Its active user groups ensure that it remains aligned with municipalities’ changing requirements and evolving statutory obligations.

The ability to access SAMRAS via the Internet creates a number of benefits for municipalities, not the least of which is access via any device from any location with Internet access. It means that municipalities, especially smaller ones, can obtain the benefit of a highly effective and trusted municipal ERP without the need to make the investment in infrastructure and IT staff an on-premise solution would entail. The monthly, user-based billing model moves the solution off the capital expenditure (capex) budget onto the operational expenditure (opex) budget.

“Each municipality’s data is housed separately in a multi-tenant architecture to preserve confidentiality,” Brougham-Cook notes. “It’s also important to note that data is housed in data centres based within South Africa’s borders, so there are no issues relating to data sovereignty and access as there would be with extra-territorial data centres.”