“A decade of reflecting on how cloud technology has evolved around us, expectations to realities”
“Server Down” – A Nightmare, you woke up to..
Early 2019, time when ERPNext was already a popular and as competitive product, adoptability was taking good shape and conference was very common place to be and connect with community to hear the stories beyond your reach. We were in decision and dilemma to streamline the business around one technical platform to follow.
Major problem those early years were
- Deployment and Replication.
- Updates/Upgrade.
- Backups and Restorations.
- Maintaining (stable and working copy across) instances like Dev, UAT and Production and so on.
- Stability and Performance of the System.
There were an arrangement as ERPNext.com hosting, but was not favorable as,
- Per User Costing
- No support to Customisation or Customise Apps
There were unmet promises around making the some of the deployment tools like Central to be Public. Literally making things complicated, lengthy, unreliable and sometimes worst. No sign of help, we were doing on our own research per customer and project how to support and make it viable for us and customer to win the order and sustain over a period till and through the AMC.
Deployments were a nightmare, though controlled to level best possible our end, we were struggling to avoid challenges like system downtime, data loss and running and keeping system Up, than solving any bugs and issues. System update and upgrade were like wandering the unknown till it is done even for various small things or for silly reasons.
Knock on the door..
Roaming in the real cloud in hills and nature makes you feel like a real chill. It’s mesmerizing. Probably the same I was trying to experience when I heard about the (server/data) Clouds and its benefits and so on.. but disappointed, and one of the reason was (and is) most of the Cloud providers were just minting a running trend, and driving crazy with services. Effectively a sugar quoted bloats. Some were there real and true, but difficult to try all and above all costing a bomb, and balancing was tough job to win and run for a bread, as hosting being just a support system and not a main stream job. Till then, listening to Cloud Number 9 and On My Cloud with eyes closed was only beauty, I guess đŸ™‚
But It’s announced, Frappe Cloud is coming. And we started dreaming something good on the way, but still a dream and skeptical how things would be, with an understanding around ERPNext managed hosting plans, but were eager to witness something super.
Taste with a Pinch of Salt
As soon it gets available, eager to try out, started almost immediately, first month though cautiously migrated almost 6 sites in June 2020. There were still shortcomings and challenges,
- Biggest was mapping between billing, expected server performance vs. current and it’s usage and billing.
- Slightest variation to above was how to map this to arrive at right proposals in future.
- Team Management or Access Issue.
- Deployment ease both for standard and custom. (Compared to today)
- Teething challenges like Downtime, it’s follow-ups, Server or other glitches keeping service halts.
- Availability of Regions.
- Payment Modes and Credits Management was still manual.
- Transparency in terms of Consumption and Contribution.
- No support in terms of Build Failures, or errors, rectification. (Though was supported by team manually)
It was a journey of patience and learning along the developmental journey of Product in making. We hooked to it despite, things and challenges faced then, wish was simple, this should prove to our expectations. As we were getting one-on-one support through the team over channels available. We went on migrating as much we can.
With time, I must say, it tasted rather Sweeeeet. (per your taste.) It turn out true to expectations set by the Frappe Cloud Captain Aditya Hase.
Compliance and Reliability
Many of Customers has concerns over a compliances, FrappeCloud based on AWS does relax some of those, and later FrappeCloud being the Quality and Information Security Compliant make things further easier.
Second respect to reliability, regions and data storage, Now supported with region takes care of the same, not all but majority is covered. Backup and Redundancy, been taken care inherently. https://frappe.io/blog/General/gdpr
It as well takes care about the site and data safety, as a regulation every access from backend (for purpose like debugging, fixing etc..) is logged and recorded with a purpose to justify the access. Framework Front is solid to take care of your data and backend too not loose to allow a passer by.
Heavy Load and Usage, FrappeCloud Managed Servers, does the job pretty well for you. Now, with USD 5 plan, we are covered from smallest of small need to Server Plans for biggest of big. Just that documentation may be insufficient at times to support the ask like Disaster Recovery, Business Continuity etc.. but I believe there are options as it arise in real, just that not readily, like other clouds too, it’s possible but need to plan, provision and execute.
One of the compliance is keeping up with updates and upgrades, pre-FC era we had many Customers stuck up with Old Outdated version of OS and ERPNext as a matter of comfort and not willing to plan and spend for undesired, and upgrade the outdated was a real pain. Now, with FC, we have to keep with the pace of Updates and Upgrade, that’s good for add-on security, speed and reliability over time.
“FrappeCloud” – A Real Cloud Experience for Frappe Apps.
Things started ticking with time. Clarity on Billing and Usage with Re-introduction of FrappeCloud, Introduction of Market Place, Introduction of Servers, BOYD, Adding on Analysis and so on things to monitor and watch out, slowly it come to life and grown beyond our expectations.
Surely, taken over all the woes we had for (pre-FC) initial years we grappling with and unintentional time and money spent on unplanned and not-budgeted things to support the project and client. We are now counting on bonuses on anything and everything coming now onwards, as satisfied with the base. True to it’s saying, https://frappecloud.com/docs/introduction
May not be 100%, though..
Progress open up new challenges and it’s a never ending journey. So to say, currently FC takes care of problems which eats up 80% of energy, may be ~20% energy problems still exists and bound to exists. We are certainly happy for Elephant out of room now and so for all effected clients too. Current, major problem is migrating a existing ERPNext client from other cloud to FC with big DB and Files storage, or any such big upload pre or post setup, is still a challenge. But once you land up there, then you are taken care of.
Is it just to be a Frappe Partner?
Yes. It is a model by which ecosystem works, where it is in interest of Frappe to host as much on Frappe Cloud, and that’s how the Free and OpenSource (by all thoughts, emotions and operation) product company sustain and flourish. And so, it is in our interest as partner to keep this in cycle, and so as our partnership and contribution fall in line. This is True.
But is it a sole reason? Big No.
Beyond all good, everyone is concerned about the business be it we at Indictrans or our Customers in their respect, no one tolerate a service disruption whatsoever. It is painful chain of action and disruption if things goes wrong. This is a baseline as far as Customer is concerned, we are too a consumer of FrappeCloud in that respect for our own services.
Above all, there are lot of things to take care as a Service Provider which been addressed already. All has to perform to its best to rely on any services, we are pretty convinced and confident with Frappe Cloud for us, our customers and anyone seeking suggestion and recommendations.
We are Up on Cloud..Happily Ever After.
Now just after ~4 years, this was with everyone, even client, Frappe/ERPNext Deployment=FrappeCloud. It took time, but it became a First Preferred Choice, unless there is some unmet requirement and complication FrappeCloud is the choice and the way.
Meet all other awesome Products,
https://frappe.io/products
Credits:
References used from below and all credits and copyrights remains with original authors/creator 1. Images from YouTube ERPNext Conference 2019. 2. Images/screens from Frappe.io and frappe.cloud 3. Cloud Number 9 - By Brian Adams 4. On My Cloud - By Olly Murs