To help you appreciate this transformation, let’s take a look at brief history of Infor. Infor was founded in 2002, taking advantage of a fragmented and rapidly consolidating enterprise applications market.Infor was not alone in this strategy - Oracle and SAP were also taking advantage of the consolidating market – but Infor was the first company to build its growth strategy around these unique market conditions.But in 2008 with the market conditions deteriorating – Infor’s owner Golden Gate decided it was time to move from a consolidation to a product-led strategy to drive growth.New management came on board in December 2010 with former Oracle President Charles Phillips taking the helm as CEO. His first priority was to invest significantly in the Infor product lines. Second priority was to expand Infor’s footprint, which resulted in the acquisition of Lawson Software in 2011, which brought Financials, HCM solutions and strengthened Infor’s expertise in key industries like Healthcare, Public Sector, Food, Fashion and Equipment.Third priority was to strengthen the Infor ecosystem with strategic partnerships – including IBM and Salesforce.Two of the crowning achievements during this “Innovation Phase” have been the delivery of Infor 10 and most recently Infor 10x, which have brought Infor applications, technology and user interface under a unified Infor experience reflected by the company’s new brand.
Committed to IBM iSince the beginningManufacturing - MAPICS, BPCS, JBA, MovexDistribution – A+Into the future Infor 10XInfor XA, LX, System 21, M3, A+
Let’s talk a bit about the architecture of our products now
We think the way to do this is simply and efficiently.We don’t have to look far for an example – the internet is this already.In our version – all the applications publish in XML – the language of the internet - and every business event and transaction produces an XML document – it publishes and is subscribed to by every application that uses that document. Its based on standards – OAGIS.Internet is the most successful integrated application that scales the world – if one application goes down, the internet doesn’t go down, its very open and very resilient.This inverts the model for enterprise apps.We think they will move away from huge, complex middleware stacks.ION middleware is very simple – 3 CD’s – opposite of complex middleware. We don’t need the complexity of traditional middleware – just not needed for application integration. We have customers who buy ION with no Infor apps.It can do many different things beyond routing – we can route a copy of every document and every version of a document into an area called the BV – we can use that later for in-context BI – rich history of data in their organizations.Benefit we get is that we get “big data” for free – a rich data warehouse – we save it all – storage is cheap, networks fast, no need not to save this. We think this is the way enterprise applications will talk to each other going forward.
We think the way to do this is simply and efficiently.We don’t have to look far for an example – the internet is this already.In our version – all the applications publish in XML – the language of the internet - and every business event and transaction produces an XML document – it publishes and is subscribed to by every application that uses that document. Its based on standards – OAGIS.Internet is the most successful integrated application that scales the world – if one application goes down, the internet doesn’t go down, its very open and very resilient.This inverts the model for enterprise apps.We think they will move away from huge, complex middleware stacks.ION middleware is very simple – 3 CD’s – opposite of complex middleware. We don’t need the complexity of traditional middleware – just not needed for application integration. We have customers who buy ION with no Infor apps.It can do many different things beyond routing – we can route a copy of every document and every version of a document into an area called the BV – we can use that later for in-context BI – rich history of data in their organizations.Benefit we get is that we get “big data” for free – a rich data warehouse – we save it all – storage is cheap, networks fast, no need not to save this. We think this is the way enterprise applications will talk to each other going forward.
Let’s talk a bit about the architecture of our products now
Hook & Loop consists of more than 50 designers, storytellers, information architects, and artists. Hook & Loop is an internal think tank for creative problem solving.
A proof point to this is this our latest generation of products that will be delivered in the Fall – we call it our 10x product.The first thing you see is that it doesn’t look like a traditional enterprise application.New UI, clean, more colour, adopts the style sheets of the new products – looks more like something you would see with Google analytics, Twitter or internet applications.We think this is important because it will differentiate us from other companies and will help customers users adopt the solutions more easily and faster.
Flip the structure of workContextual data at the point of decisionSocial computing changes work for the betterMobile accelerates the flow of information & workAnalytics + Process Automation + Collaboration/Productivity
“Everybody” says it is declining, going away, not what it used to beIt’s what the analysts say…The Analysts Never Said That!They said the application vendors were not supporting the platformExtremely low staffing requirementsExtremely low headaches, few embarrassing momentsWhy Should ERP Be Different on IBM i? It Shouldn’t!You Should Get What Everyone Else Does,Delivered On The Best Business Computing Platform in the World!
ERP vendors on IBM i can provide robust value deliveryFunctional Enhancement in Core and Extended solutions“Systems of Engagement” – change the way users interact with the ERPModern System ArchitectureThe future is bright for IBM i customers – You get everything the industry offers, and you get to use the best system platform
Typical of a maturing business…Customer retention is now paramountContinuing value delivery – now and tomorrowContinuous engagement with customersUsed to be sell, sell, sell, five year swap cycles – now it is hold onSpecialization and differentiation“One size fits all” doesn’t fit anymoreDeeper, more specialized functionality is critical (*new per EMcG) System Platform, Industry, Scale and Geography drive the fitLarge scale is a requirementExtended ERP applicationsConsumerization of applicationsRe-architect for flexible deployment, lower implementation cost