Upbeat performance puts Infor users on track to network

As yesterday’s Inforum user conference kicked off in London – part of a worldwide tour – with Kashmir its signature tune, Infor EMEA president Keith Deane compared its tightly synchronised performance to excellence in manufacturing, observing wryly one difference – that it should never end. Which is a challenge: As Keane says, 2015 is just a couple of planning cycles away for many manufacturers – but who knows what the world will look like then. “What we do know is that competition is just going to get harder as we enter the era of hyper business activity” he said. “So companies will have to make critical decisions faster, and we’ll be looking at 24/7 business, job sharing around the world…” His point: business Darwinism increasingly favours agile, efficient, fast, adaptive companies that embrace change and are proactive about it – and equally, it punishes laggards hard. Hence Infor’s emphasis on synchronising disparate elements – of rock bands, operational manufacturing business silos and its own IT systems. “You need to evolve your business networks – become like LinkedIn on steroids – to build an adaptable, extended enterprise. And all of that will need to be managed by your software,” said Deane. “It needs to enable you and your partners to access your information anywhere and any time you want it.” Hence Infor’s innovations – and he emphasised innovations, not just acquired software. As Deane told the Infor faithful: “We’re developing Infor Open SOA, based on open standards, as a framework to let you upgrade and migrate, so you can evolve your systems towards that business network, with added value components, all through Infor.” Another open platform? More middleware in a world surely plentifully provided? Yes and no: Infor has built its Open SOA through business expediency. Bruce Gordon, the company’s CTO, next up, was unequivocal: “Infor doesn’t want to be a tools and middleware provider. We’re providing Infor Open SOA free of charge to all our customers on maintenance,” he said. Why? Because this is the framework into which the company hopes they will plug its new generation of paid for, value-add components – that individually and together make the glittering prize of that evolution possible. Deane says there will be no fewer than 19 new components on general release (that’s tested on limited release with real customers for six months before then) by end of 2009. Already, there are three: the MyDay role-based portal, which links to any information, anywhere, any source (Infor or non) without the user having to worry about navigation or logins; Decisions, which brings real-time, enquiry-driven business intelligence to line of business managers; and Order Management, which provides for multi-model pricing and time series inventory reservation right across supply chains. “These are the keys to taking your IT beyond transactional systems, to extended directive and prescriptive systems that can respond proactively to business rules and handle exceptions. And as you change, so the software can change with you the same day.” Many of those messages differ little from the marketing material pumped out by Infor’s competitors – they are, after all, what the software community is telling manufactures they need, not least because that’s what open standards and technology can deliver, it’s a good revenue model and, in turn, it raises the game we all must follow. But it does look convincing. It’s also worth noting Infor’s early pledge to that huge raft of acquired system users – that you can upgrade, migrate, add value whenever you want, and do so quickly and painlessly, whether it’s LN, Baan, Sun, Datastream, XA, LX, System 21, the list goes on – still rings very true. It was always bound to: with some 50% of revenues from maintenance, only a fool would fail to look after his customer base. And it’s worth pondering Infor’s industry functionality, as best evidenced in its Syteline, LN (Baan) and EAM (Datastream) offerings. And finally, also its longevity. With VCs Golden Gate and Summit behind it, debt financing solid through to 2014, revenues around $2.2 billion, gross profits around $700 million and no sign of a dent yet from the credit crunch, Infor’s message is looking as fresh, vibrant and engaging as Kashmir still does today.