NEW YORK, Apr 22, 2013 -- Infor, a leading provider of business application software serving more than 70,000 customers, today announced Infor Sky Vault a big data initiative that leverages Infor ION, micro-vertical expertise, and beautiful dashboards developed by Infor ION BI experts and designed by Hook & Loop, Infor's Manhattan-based in-house design agency.
 
Corporate data is fragmented across diverse commercial, legacy, and custom applications.  Using ION, customers can extract transactions formatted in industry standard XML documents and send that normalized data to the cloud for further analytics, helping them obtain meaningful insight to drive faster, better business decisions.

Recognizing these challenges, Infor is using Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enable customers to accelerate time to insight from various transactional data streams. Among the planned features of Infor Sky Vault are:

• Pre-built, domain-specific business analytics, reporting and dashboards powered by Infor ION BI that incorporate industry and role best practices built on Infor ION Business Vault
• Cloud-optimized data repository powered by Amazon Redshift to more quickly, easily, and securely go-live and scale as data volumes grow
• Industry-leading workflow and integration platform with Infor ION to support application interoperability and data transition between on-premise and cloud
• Services from Infor Consulting Services to XML enable applications via the 'ION Factory,' which provides for rapid development of integrations to third party and custom systems and applications

Infor Sky Vault is planned to launch in the second half of this year with pre-defined content for Sales, Finance, and Production. Additional functional areas and industries will be added in subsequent iterations.

To help get customers started, assessment services will be offered in conjunction with Sky Vault to determine how fast customers can go from data to insights. Packaged services will also be available to integrate additional third party and custom applications.
 
"Companies want actionable intelligence from their data and they need it fast and at a reasonable price point," said Steve Moroski, SVP, Platform Technologies, Infor. "The Infor Sky Vault initiative will focus on the relevant components to deliver insight: fast integration, parallel databases, cloud economics, speed to value, industry insight, and beautiful user experiences.  This is the formula for fast and broad adoption, where customers can get consistent, accurate, and useful data fast - in weeks not months or years."

"We designed Amazon Redshift to be fast, inexpensive, easy to use and secure and we've seen strong interest and adoption from customers," said Terry Wise, AWS Director of Worldwide Partner Ecosystem. "We're excited to help power Infor Sky Vault, a unique offering that will help customers extract value from critical business transactions."

About Infor

Infor is fundamentally changing the way information is published and consumed in the enterprise, helping 70,000 customers in 194 countries improve operations, drive growth, and quickly adapt to changes in business demands. Infor offers deep industry-specific applications and suites, engineered for speed, and with an innovative user experience design that is simple, transparent, and elegant.  Infor provides flexible deployment options that give customers a choice to run their businesses in the cloud, on-premises, or both. To learn more about Infor, please visit www.infor.com.

Infor customers include:

• 19 of the top 20 aerospace companies
• 12 of the top 13 high tech companies
• 10 of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies
• 23 of the top 50 largest US hospitals
• 43 of the top 50 industrial distributors
• 26 of the top 35 global retailers
• 5 of the top 9 brewers

This announcement reflects the direction Infor may take with regard to the specific product(s) described herein, all of which is subject to change by Infor in its sole discretion, with or without notice to you.  This announcement is not a commitment to you in any way and you should not rely on this document or any of its content in making any decision.  Infor is not committing to develop or deliver any specified enhancement, upgrade, product or functionality, even if such is described in this announcement and even if such description is accompanied by words such as "anticipate," "believe," "expect," "intend," "may," "plan," "project," "predict," "should," "will," and/or similar expressions.  Many factors can affect Infor's product development plans and the nature, content and timing of future product releases, all of which remain in the sole discretion of Infor.  This announcement, in whole or in part, may not be incorporated into any contractual agreement with Infor or its subsidiaries or affiliates.  Infor expressly disclaims any liability with respect to this announcement.