Infor Opens Center of Excellence for System i Customers

Published: June 4, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Infor, which has the largest installed base of customers using the AS/400, iSeries, and System i platform among ERP players, has every intention of keeping them--and keeping them happy. To that end, the company will announce today that it is opening a System i center of excellence, which will bring all of the hardware and software expertise embodied in the many acquisitions that Infor has made over the past several years into one resource that customers can tap into.

"Our customers rave about the reliability, convenience and low cost-of-ownership of their IBM System i platform and they want to know that their enterprise software provider is just as passionate about it as they are," explained Jim Schaper, Infor's chairman and chief executive officer, in making the announcement. "With the Infor System i Center of Excellence, we are demonstrating our long-term commitment to this platform through ongoing support and innovation that will modernize our customer's solutions."

Infor has over 16,000 customers on the System i, iSeries, or AS/400 platform, and they run its ERP LX (formerly SSA BPCS), ERP XA (formerly MAPICS), System 21 (formerly JBA), ERP A+ (formerly DP Solutions), and HCM Infinium (formerly Software 2000) software suites. The center is not just for customers of these products, but also for Infor itself to make use of as it creates its Java-based Development Framework for System i, which is a layer of software that Infor is creating to build SOA extensions to its various i5/OS software suites so they can be interwoven and so customers can mix and match their capabilities--as well as link into homegrown and other applications--without trashing their investments in existing technologies.

This framework is part of Infor's Open SOA initiative for all of its applications, and thanks to the many other acquisitions Infor has made, it has various Windows, Unix, and mainframe application suites. All told, Infor has over 70,000 customers worldwide, giving it the largest installed base of ERP customers--nearly twice the size of SAP, in fact.

The ERP XA suite will be the first ERP suite to get this development framework functionality, and Infor says that it will provide more details on this at its annual user conference, which will be hosted in Las Vegas between September 9 and 12.

RELATED STORIES

Infor Advocates Open Approach to SOA

In Formation: Q&A with Infor Chairman Jim Schaper

Infor Tells Channel Partners to Focus on Infor Products

Infor Closes SSA Buy and Acquires Remaining GEAC Bits

Infor Acquisition of SSA Global Sparks a Lawsuit

Infor to Buy SSA Global for $1.36 Billion

Infor's Owners Gobble Up Geac for $1 Billion

Infor Solutions Buys MAPICS, Takes It Private

                     Post this story to del.icio.us
               Post this story to Digg
    Post this story to Slashdot