Enterprise software provider UNIT4 has launched a new cloud platform for shared services for public and private sector organisations.
Dubbed ‘Shared Journey’, the new cloud-based offering is available for UNIT4’s Agresso Business World and Coda Financials enterprise software services.
The company made the announcement at the Grape Escape analyst event in Boston. It said that Shared Journey allows groups of companies, public sector bodies or not-for-profit organisations to work together to quickly set up and launch a shared services operation.
The company added that while the service allows each organisation to benefit from cloud computing, it also maintains independence and identity as well.
Shared Journey is based on three components: a virtual machine environment of choice; a private/public cloud environment; and a redundant web backbone and data storage hub.
UNIT4 product management VP Ton Dobbe said that Shared Journey was developed after carefully monitoring the experiences and requirements of more than 6,000 customers.
Dobbe said, "What we observed and collected was a universal set of requirements for both enterprise resource planning (ERP) and financial software needs, and compared these by industry segments most likely to adopt a shared services approach. What we discovered is that regardless of the similarities of the user organisations, rapid-change companies behave differently. They have to consider interoperability, and the impact of operational and other change dynamics that require them to take an "independence" approach to their buying behaviour, and not get locked into any one deployment model."
