Today on What the Duck?!, we’re ducking around with Brad Feakes, an expert in operations, supply chain management, and information technology. Brad sits down with Host, Sarah Scudder, to discuss the use of best-of-breed solutions to build hybrid Cloud ecosystems that support ERP customer needs. Brad shares his personal and professional journey, including his education, career choices, and his experience working with ERP systems in manufacturing companies. They also touch upon Brad's role as a business analyst and his involvement in implementing Epicor as company-wide ERP system  and his current role at EstesGroup. Show Highlights To the window and the walls What is Epicor? Pros and Cons of using Epicor vs. Other ERP systems The Estes Group The Chaos and Craziness Heard from CustomersBenefits of Best-in-Breed vs. Traditional ApproachesConstructing an Ecosystem for ITWhat is a Successful Exosystem? MOMENTS TO DUCK AROUNDBRAD: THE BEST-OF-BREED APPROACH“Best of breed as an approach to enterprise ecosystem development says that I am going to choose the best functionality available in each domain to try and execute that area's domain responsibility. So, an area of responsibility might be purchasing. If I'm using a best-of-breed approach, I'm going to say, "I'm going to try to find the best solution possible to cut POs quickly and efficiently, accurately reflect the right lead times, and be able to manage those changes as efficiently as possible." That is the best-of-breed approach. You could compare it to what you might call the unified system approach.” BRAD: HYBRID CLOUD VS. BEST-OF-BREED“Hybrid cloud is thought of as the technical instantiation of a best-of-breed approach. So, a hybrid cloud is where each solution itself may have its own architecture that is different than, say, the core architecture of the ERP system with which you're working. Now, what that allows for in a hybrid cloud architecture is you build integrations between your core system and all of its peripheral ancillary systems. Some of those might be installed locally at the customer's site. Shipping solutions, quite often, are installed locally because they have a very large sets of data that needs to be processed very quickly. So, you might have an on-premise application that connects to a hybrid cloud where your core ERP system is.” Connect with Brad and learn what he’s been duckin’ around with:Brad Feakes| EstesGroupConnect with Sarah and find out more about what the duck she’s up toLinkedIn |Twitter |SourceDay |SourceDay.comHad fun with the podcast? Leave us a like, share our content, and subscribe! See you soon on the next episode of What The Duck?!