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Infor Jumps into SaaS Market

by Jeff Moad, MA Editorial Staff

Posted on Wednesday, October 15, 2008 3:27:09 PM       Sign Up to receive Daily News Alerts in your E-mail Inbox                               

LAS VEGAS — Infor today jumped forcefully into the software-as-a-service market, making available a subscription-priced SaaS ERP service as well as two other new SaaS products: an expense management service and an enterprise asset management service.

At its annual Inforum customer conference here, Infor also provided more details on its plans to evolve its current lineup of products — mostly added through acquisition — toward a modern, SOA-enabled architecture that officials said will enable businesses to become more agile.

Separately, Infor Chairman and CEO Jim Schaper today said that despite current economic uncertainty, Infor is financially “very healthy.” While the privately owned company does not expect to be immune from the kind of downturn in the enterprise software market that recently struck competitor SAP, Infor is, to some extent, “insulated” from the downturn, Schaper said, pointing to its average order size of about $50,000, much lower than its main competitors.

“In a down economy, larger implementations are the first to suffer,” Schaper said in a press conference.

In its first fiscal quarter ended Aug. 31, Infor saw flat software license revenue, 2% growth in maintenance revenue, and 5% growth in services revenue, its CEO said. Schaper noted that Infor has $450 million in cash and revolving lines of credit. He said the company would continue to seek acquisitions, although in recent months the company has been relatively quiet on that front.

In the on-demand arena, Infor said the SaaS version of its SyteLine ERP suite is available in the United States and Canada and will be rolled out later in other countries. SyteLine, which targets mid-market engineer-to-order, make-to-order, and mixed-mode manufacturers, will be priced at $149 per user per month.

Infor said is also making available an SaaS version of its Infor EAM Business Edition enterprise asset management application, which targets small and medium-sized businesses. Customers can use EAM Business Edition for work management, preventive maintenance, and inventory management. Two other Infor EAM products, EAM Enterprise Edition for larger enterprises and Enterprise Asset Sustainability Edition, are not currently being offered on a SaaS subscription basis.

The software provider said it is also offering a subscription-based SaaS version of its Infor Expense Management application, which employees can use to manage travel and other expenses.

Infor did not release subscription pricing details for the SaaS versions of EAM Business Edition or Expense Management.

Infor expects that the new subscription-based systems will enable smaller manufacturing companies to buy new applications because they will not need to purchase the computing infrastructure on which to run them.

“Today manufacturers have a need to control asset costs, but they also need to defer capital expenditures, if possible, because many are cash-strapped,” said John Murphy, Infor’s director of EAM product marketing, in an interview with Managing Automation.

The new SaaS subscription offerings represent a third implementation option for Infor customers. Already customers can choose a hosted on-demand implementation option in addition to the traditional on-premise deployment. Unlike the new SaaS offerings, however, those options require customers to purchase software licenses.

With the new SaaS offerings, Infor joins competitors such as SAP in migrating gradually to a subscription-based SaaS model. Like Infor, SAP is rolling out its Business ByDesign SaaS ERP offering gradually in selected locations. Earlier this year, SAP said it would slow its Business ByDesign rollout, reducing its investment in the program by €100 million this year and restricting rollout of the product during the year to six key countries: Germany, the United States, France, the United Kingdom, China, and India.

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