ERP Hosting Providers
ERP hosting providers operate a customer's ERP system in a managed data centre, preserving the existing licence and customisation while transferring infrastructure responsibility from the buyer to a specialist operator. This category sits between classic on-premises operation (full customer responsibility) and the ERP vendor's own SaaS offering (full standardisation). For German Mid-Market operations that have invested heavily in customising an SAP, Microsoft Dynamics or Sage system, managed hosting often delivers the operational benefits of cloud without forcing the rebuild that a pure SaaS migration would require.
Three hosting models compared
Three distinct hosting models address overlapping needs. Classic managed-cloud providers — German operators such as plusserver, IONOS, gridscale or specialist SAP hosts — run the ERP instance on dedicated or shared infrastructure in EU data centres, with operational responsibility (backup, patching, monitoring, disaster recovery) included. Hyperscalers — AWS Frankfurt, Microsoft Azure Germany, Google Cloud Frankfurt — provide raw infrastructure on which the customer or a partner runs the ERP; this offers elasticity and a wide service ecosystem but requires more operational maturity. Vendor SaaS — RISE with SAP, Dynamics 365 Cloud, NetSuite — is the most standardised option but typically requires retiring custom code in favour of vendor-managed extensions.
When managed hosting is the right fit
Managed hosting is the natural fit for organisations whose ERP carries substantial customisation that would be expensive to re-engineer, whose internal IT capacity is constrained, and whose compliance environment (GoBD in Germany, EU data residency, industry-specific regulation) demands a documented operator. It is less suitable when the organisation is preparing a strategic move to vendor SaaS within two to three years, in which case the migration to managed hosting risks becoming a wasted interim step. A clear-eyed total-cost-of-ownership comparison over five years between managed hosting and vendor SaaS, including re-customisation costs, is the right starting point.
Service levels and data residency
Useful evaluation criteria for a managed-hosting provider: contractually committed service levels (typically 99.5 to 99.9 per cent availability for ERP workloads, with named recovery-time and recovery-point objectives), data-centre location in Germany or the EU with documented certifications (ISO 27001, BSI C5, SOC 2), and clearly defined responsibilities for OS patching, database administration and ERP application support. Buyers should pay particular attention to the boundary between infrastructure operation and application operation — for an SAP system, the provider may operate Linux and HANA but expect the customer or its implementation partner to operate the SAP layer.
Costs and contract length
Managed-hosting contracts in DACH typically run three to five years, with monthly subscription pricing that includes infrastructure, base operating services and a defined support tier. Pricing scales with database size, user count and required service level rather than with ERP licence value. A 150-user mid-market ERP system typically lands between 5,000 and 15,000 euro per month for hosting alone, exclusive of ERP licences and application support. Shorter pilot contracts of twelve months are increasingly common and recommended for first-time outsourcing arrangements.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is managed ERP hosting the same as cloud ERP?
Not quite. Managed hosting runs the customer's existing on-premises ERP licence in someone else's data centre, preserving customisation. Cloud ERP, in the strict sense, is multi-tenant SaaS operated by the vendor (NetSuite, Business Central Cloud, S/4HANA Public Cloud), where the customer trades customisation depth for managed standardisation. Both reduce internal IT load but with different trade-offs.
Does managed hosting work for GoBD compliance?
Yes. GoBD (the German principles for proper digital bookkeeping) governs the immutability and traceability of accounting records, not their physical location. A managed-hosting provider with EU data residency, ISO 27001 certification and documented backup procedures can meet GoBD requirements as long as the operational responsibilities are clearly assigned in the contract.
Can I move from managed hosting to vendor SaaS later?
Technically yes, but it is a migration project of similar magnitude to the original ERP implementation. Custom code typically needs to be replaced by vendor-supported extensions, and processes may need to align to vendor-defined standards. Organisations that anticipate this move within two to three years often skip the managed-hosting step entirely.
How is managed hosting priced compared with on-premises?
Managed hosting converts capital expenditure (servers, licences, internal IT staff) into operating expenditure (monthly subscription). Five-year total cost of ownership is often comparable, with managed hosting slightly cheaper for organisations that would otherwise have to recruit and retain ERP-specialised infrastructure staff.