Palladium Business Solutions has signed an Enterprise agreement with Microsoft to host client's data in the cloud. This means that clients are no longer required to purchase costly hardware in the form of servers or have upfront fees to purchase the MS SQL server database. This option gives Palladium clients the ability to choose the deployment option that fits their specific needs, whether it is on-premise, in the safety of their own file server, data centre or in the cloud. This is a flexible and cost-effective option for medium-sized businesses and offers extensive benefits for growth and expansion.

According to IDC, more than 90% of new applications are built for the cloud and more importantly, SaaS revenue is growing five times faster than packaged software. Palladium Business Solutions managing director Stephen Corrigan says the cloud market is growing at a rapid pace and this is the first step towards providing a true cloud solution. "Currently the data is secure and backed-up in the cloud, and only the Palladium client is installed on the terminal."

"This has opened up a plethora of opportunities for us with clients using laptops or Windows tablets to run and access their Palladium data from anywhere in the world," he adds. Since inception, Palladium has offered embedded VPN functionality that allows for remote database connectivity. Rather than setting up workstations on a local network and connecting terminals to the locally server, Palladium allows users to first setup a connection to a local or externally situated cluster of Palladium SQL Server databases.

“Our dynamic database connectivity is another reason why Palladium has always run effortlessly on wireless networks, alleviating the need for UPS’s on each machine and of course greatly reducing the total cost of ownership,” he says. Database updates are done using SQL rollback functionality, ensuring that the integrity of the data is not compromised.

“All our current development efforts are focussed on our cloud strategy. August will see the release of our mobile Purchase Order approval module, that will manage online approvals for various accounting software packages, with the release of our new Palladium Payroll application following shortly thereafter,” he explains.

“Both these developments are aligned with our overall development strategy, using state-of-the-art design patterns for our user-interface and backend applications, cementing the path for the future by facilitating accelerated product growth. With the prolific improvements with internet connectivity in South Africa of late, the natural progression for us was to host client’s data and embrace the aggressive development drive towards cloud solutions," concludes Corrigan.