Infor and IBM have announced an agreement which will see Infor offering its enterprise application software on IBM's public, private and hybrid SmartCloud infrastructure.
Infor offers enterprise CRM, ERP, financial management, human resources and business intelligence software. The deal means that Infor's popular applications such as Infor LN, Infor M3, Infor Lawson, and Infor HCM will be available through IBM's cloud.
Infor said that many organisations are keen to take advantage of cloud computing to run business critical applications on the cloud, but may require around-the-clock customer service, security and high availability, as well as greater resiliency for mission-critical operations.
"This is a tremendous opportunity for Infor clients to extend the value of their industry-leading enterprise apps on IBM's cloud with its built-in resiliency and redundancy to protect mission-critical operations," said Ali Shadman, senior vice president of Business Cloud and Upgrade/S at Infor. "We think it's especially well-suited for clients who are looking for more enterprise-class cloud support and assurances."
The agreement, announced at Infor's annual user conference, will provide clients with Infor’s software across the broadest range of systems, Windows, Linux, AIX, System i and z, on IBM’s open standards-based SmartCloud portfolio, taking advantage of IBM’s cloud running across five continents.
Infor will offer its software portfolio as Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service through IBM’s standard public cloud and premium managed cloud services, as well as IBM’s private clouds such as PureSystems and SmartCloud Orchestration, which tap OpenStack.
The two firms said that many clients can benefit from running Infor’s software on IBM SmartCloud Enterprise+ (SCE+), a managed Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud. IBM SCE+ is built with superior infrastructure resilience for cloud-enabled applications, leveraging IBM hardware and software. IBM developed SCE+ based on decades of hosting experience gained by being the world’s largest provider of IT sourcing services with more than 1,000 clients.
“Today’s agreement will help businesses looking to put the power of cloud at the fingertips of their line-of-business teams,” said Michael Healy, vice president, IBM Cloud Computing. “Cloud is driving a massive transformation in the way users consume IT and the business innovation they deliver.”
The firms said that IBM SmartCloud could help extend the life of an organisation's Infor software investments by enabling an upgrade of legacy apps to current versions via the cloud. The service is expected to be available starting May 1, 2013.
