Many things define the current era of software. But almost certainly, the most impactful is how choices evolved from tightly-coupled on-premises monolithic suites to decentralised cloud-native software platforms.

One of the impacts of this change is that enterprise-grade software, freed from tremendous upfront costs or ongoing overheads, has become more accessible to medium-sized enterprises.

But what about larger companies? Should they stick to those large applications? For industry and ERP veteran Grant McClymont, who recently joined ETS as Executive of ERP & Enterprise Applications, the trend is towards today’s cloud-native midmarket apps.

“Organisations that were once nervous about transitioning to a cloud-based strategy are now more confident that it is possible. Not many years ago, people were suspicious about having e-mail in the cloud, but very few organisations now have an e-mail server. There are fewer reasons for companies to have enterprise applications, such as financial management systems running in a company server room or data centre.”

Cloud is one of the key technologies disrupting the future of business software, and every forward-thinking company has a cloud transformation strategy. Some primarily see the cloud as merely a good place to “put” current applications – doing a ‘lift and shift’ of an existing on-premises application onto cloud infrastructure to save some money in the short-term. McClymont thinks companies should look deeper than this approach and also look to improve during this migration.