Häufig gestellte Fragen
Which is cheaper: cloud ERP or on-premises?
Over a five-year horizon, cloud ERP for many midmarket companies comes in around 15 to 20 percent below the total cost of ownership (TCO) of an on-premises installation, because hardware, server operations and the six-figure licence investment are eliminated. Over seven to ten years, this ratio can reverse, since on-premises licences count as a one-off payment while the monthly subscriptions of a SaaS solution accumulate and are usually indexed annually. What is decisive are the individual assumptions about user numbers, customisation depth and internal IT effort, which is why a concrete TCO calculation with the respective vendor is always worthwhile. Blanket statements regularly mislead here, because hidden items such as integration, training and update effort affect the two models differently.
Is cloud ERP GDPR-compliant?
Cloud ERP can be operated in compliance with the GDPR if the provider offers servers in the EU (ideally Germany) as well as a data processing agreement (DPA) pursuant to Art. 28 GDPR and documents the processing. With US providers, the transfer is based on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, whose adequacy decision the EU General Court upheld on 3 September 2025 in the Latombe case; however, an appeal before the CJEU (Case C-703/25 P) is still pending, so some residual legal uncertainty remains. For particularly sensitive data, EU hosting or a provider with certified European data centre infrastructure therefore continues to be recommended. Industries with special regulations such as pharmaceuticals, healthcare or financial services should additionally review their sector-specific compliance requirements.
Can I switch from cloud to on-premises later?
A switch from SaaS back to on-premises is technically possible but laborious in practice, because data structures, configurations and custom extensions have to be migrated. The EU Data Act, which has applied since 12 September 2025, significantly improves the starting position: cloud providers must dismantle contractual and technical switching hurdles, hand over data in a structured, machine-readable format and enable a switch with a notice period of no more than two months. Switching fees are prohibited in principle after a transitional period from 12 January 2027 onwards, which noticeably defuses classic vendor lock-in. Anyone who wants to run on-premises securely in the long term should nevertheless clarify the deployment question early, since not every cloud-native platform is even available as a self-hosted installation.
Which ERP systems are available only as cloud?
Cloud-native systems offered exclusively as SaaS include Oracle NetSuite, SAP Business ByDesign or its cloud-native successor, and Xentral. These solutions run multi-tenant at the provider, receive automatic updates and cannot be installed in your own data centre, which rules out deep customisation of the source code. Established vendors such as SAP or Microsoft, by contrast, offer their suites both on-premises and as cloud editions, and some systems marketed as cloud-first, such as Haufe X360 or weclapp, in individual cases still offer a self-hosted variant, so the exact deployment options should always be verified with the vendor. The page Cloud-native ERP provides an overview of pure cloud solutions; some specialised industry software remains available only as an on-premises variant.
Is cloud ERP more secure than your own data centre?
The blanket statement 'the cloud is insecure' does not withstand closer scrutiny, because established providers operate redundant, multiply mirrored data centres with professional patch management and included disaster recovery concepts. In Germany, the BSI's C5 criteria catalogue serves as the benchmark of quality; its C5:2026 edition now comprises 168 audit criteria across 17 subject areas and covers aspects such as data location, place of jurisdiction and disclosure obligations. For many small and medium-sized enterprises without a dedicated security team, C5-attested cloud operation is therefore genuinely more secure than self-hosting. On-premises, by contrast, retains the advantage of full data sovereignty and control over logs and access, which can tip the balance where confidentiality or regulatory requirements are very high.
How has the market developed between cloud ERP and on-premises?
The market has clearly shifted towards the cloud: industry analyses estimate the cloud share of the ERP market at around 70 percent for 2025, compared with roughly half in 2020, and an even higher share of new implementations now goes to SaaS models. The on-premises market is growing only in the low single-digit percentage range, while the cloud ERP market is recording double-digit annual growth rates. The trend is further fuelled by vendor deadlines such as the end of mainstream maintenance for SAP ECC on 31 December 2027 (with paid extension until 2030). Despite this momentum, on-premises remains relevant in highly regulated industries and for highly customised manufacturing, so the decision still depends on the specific company profile.