A webinar briefing this week on data transfer technologies and application portfolios included a new phrase: Going Cloud. It sounded like the ideal of going green for paper-based enterprises, or moving away from something that once served its purpose well. One of the providers of a migration replacement package for 3000 manufacturing users suggests it's high time to consider the unseen potential of the cloud as a place that ERP can go.

In a blog post called Cloud ERP: Inertia Is Not An Option, a technologist at the ERP vendor Kenandy touts an analyst's white paper that says there are "increasingly credible alternatives to the old line behemoths,” and giving Kenandy as an example. The white paper by Cindy Jutras of ERP consultants Mint Jutras is titled Next Generation ERP: Kenandy's Approach. It makes a case for why an HP 3000 stalwart like MANMAN, built by ASK in the 1970s, is ready for a trip to the cloud.

Kenandy needs to actively engage not only with its prospects, but also its customers. For that type of engagement, it needs to build an active community.

This was something Sandy Kurtzig’s prior company ASK was very good at – so good in fact that the MANMAN community has outlived the company and lives on even today. Can Kenandy replicate this kind of success? Odds are in favor of doing just that. The MANMAN community was built on word of mouth, local and regional user groups and an annual conference.

Not only does Kenandy hope to be able to deliver a full customer list for references (as ASK did for many years), but also has many more tools at its disposal to support that community, including a one-stop customer portal (called the Kenandy Community). Its ability to engage with the community either as a whole, or personally, one customer at a time, has never been more technology-enabled.