Lessons Learned from Warehouse Management Systems in the Cloud

Warehouse Management Systems – from some vendors at least – were a little late to move to the Cloud versus other supply chain applications, such as Transportation Management Systems. That’s for a number of reasons, including concerns about response times for critical real-time systems such wireless terminals, Voice picking and materials handling system communications, as well as limited functionalities in some early to market Cloud WMS offerings.

Softeon has been using Cloud WMS deployments for many years, but has really seen adoption take-off in the past two years. Currently, about 75% of new WMS deployments are Cloud-based, heading towards nearly 100%. 

We also have a number of customers that have easily migrated from existing on-premise WMS implementations to the Cloud.

This is due to the major advantages from Cloud deployments in such areas as time and cost of the implementations and ease of system management post-go live, requiring little customer internal IT resources.

After a significant number of Cloud WMS deployments, Softeon has gained insights that are potentially interest to prospective WMS adopters, which we’ll summarize below. 

Those include:

• Concerns about response times for wireless terminals, materials handling systems, and more are very overblown, at least with a system architected to maximize Cloud performance. We have seen almost no latency issues.
• That said, simulation prior to go-live is recommended to achieve performance certainty. It is beneficial to use a simulation tool that allows the measurement of response times, for example, coming from the Cloud for message requests from material handling systems, gauging performance and making adjustments as needed.
• Though uncommon, with any latency issues that may come up, it is possible to deploy a local “agent” to provide a buffer between the WMS in the Cloud and a process such as to divert instructions to a sortation system. But this is rarely required.
• Even when multi-tenant deployment offerings are available, nearly all companies prefer a private Cloud environment, versus a SaaS model with many clients on a   single instance of the WMS.   
• The deployment benefits are real. Implementation times for Cloud deployments are faster than for comparable on-premise projects, reducing costs and accelerating time to value.
• Cloud also enables more rapid WMS deployments if needed for given business situations, which seems an increasingly common scenario.
• Flexibility in Cloud hosting is important. Some retail, and even 3PL companies, for example, do not want the use of Amazon’s Cloud platform for competitive reasons. Because of that market reaction, look for a WMS vendor that can offer a choice between several hosting providers.
• Internal IT resources needed for deployment and on-going system WMS maintenance are reduced dramatically with Cloud implementations, to the point that almost no resources are required on an on-going basis in many cases.
• Along the same line, companies are pleased with how easy it is to set-up test or development instances of the WMS versus the effort often seen doing so with traditional on-premise deployments.
• We are finding customer satisfaction is simply higher with Cloud WMS deployment, as management of the system is handled by our team at Softeon, dramatically reducing internal support needs and concerns.
• If the path is made easy and attractive, many companies are interested in moving existing on-premise WMS deployments to a Cloud-based system.

Supply chain software in the Cloud has clearly achieved critical mass – and Cloud-based Warehouse Management Systems are now ready for prime time, providing many advantages to the companies that adopt them.