Infor Open SOA Provides Evolutionary Path to Business Innovation; Built-in SOA without Platform “Lock-in”
ATLANTA – March 13, 2007 – Infor today unveiled its service-oriented architecture (SOA) strategy, Infor Open SOA, part of the company’s commitment to extend, enrich and evolve its product lines to meet the needs of enterprising companies of all sizes.
Infor Open SOA provides the capabilities for an event-driven SOA, which is an approach where interoperable applications and software components can be deployed and upgraded with little or no disruption to other enterprise systems. The infrastructure for event-driven SOA is built into Infor solutions, at no additional cost to the customer, and will be delivered with regular product upgrades according to the Infor product roadmap.
“Infor Open SOA is the result of a dialogue we had with our customers, who told us they wanted the benefits of SOA, without the upfront costs, lengthy implementations and all the undue complexities,” said Jim Schaper, CEO of Infor. “Our approach is different than other enterprise application providers because it is grounded in a fundamental understanding of our customers’ business challenges.”
Event-driven SOA
Infor Open SOA is based on an event-driven, distributed architecture that allows orchestration of business events across enterprise applications and services. Through a publish and subscribe model, business events are exchanged asynchronously between applications and services across the standards-based Infor Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), in accordance with event orchestration modeling specific to industry and customer-specific business processes.
Instead of forcing customers into a vendor-focused ecosystem, Infor’s event-driven SOA architecture allows customers to create their own ecosystem, deploying software components from Infor, in-house, and third-party sources. It eliminates the dependencies of “command and control” middleware that bloats with complexity as new services are added. By remaining platform-independent, Infor Open SOA facilitates interoperability between different enterprise systems and prevents the need to “rip-and-replace” to support the requirements of a proprietary middleware stack.
“We’re not following the beaten path of creating large, complex platforms that require customers to lock-in to technologies they do not need and cannot afford,” said Bruce Gordon, CTO of Infor. “Infor Open SOA allows customers to innovate through an approach that is interoperable by design. It enables our customers to make their own choices and puts them in control of their enterprise ecosystem.”
As part of its commitment to open standards, Infor has adopted the Open Applications Group Interoperability Standard (OAGIS) as the native interface for all communication between Infor solutions. OAGIS is the most mature and extensible XML-based format and an accepted standard across industries. It is governed by an independent standards body and available without royalty or licensing fees.
Strategic Direction
Infor is delivering Open SOA in phases as non-disruptive, incremental updates with regular product release plans. This evolutionary approach includes the delivery of business process components, in broadly applicable solution areas such as customer relationship management and supply chain, which can then be assembled into business-specific solution suites. These suites will combine best-in-class intellectual property from Infor’s product portfolio, which is rich with built-in business and industry experience. Through Infor Open SOA, customers will have the freedom and flexibility to mix and match business processes to meet their needs, delivered on the technology platform of their choice.
Infor has already delivered on the initial phase of Open SOA, providing the basic event-driven infrastructure and embedding it into several solutions. Infor is currently building the extended SOA infrastructure, such as master data management, and concentrating on the continued enablement of existing solutions as well as the introduction of new, native SOA applications. Infor will provide more detailed product roadmaps to its customers leading up to its annual user conference, Inforum, to be held Sep. 9-12, 2007 in Las Vegas.
About Infor
Infor delivers business specific software to enterprising organizations. With experience built in, Infor’s solutions enable businesses of all sizes to be more enterprising and adapt to the rapid changes of a global marketplace. With more than 70,000 customers, Infor is changing what businesses expect from an enterprise software provider. For additional information, visit www.infor.com.
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For more information:
Wade Coleman
Infor
(678) 591-4706
[email protected]
Justin Siefert
Wunderkind Public Relations
(404) 601-3660 ext. 113
[email protected]
