After the first day of Infor Inc.’s annual Inforum conference, theCUBE hosts Jeff Kelly and Dave Vellante shared their observations about the event and discussed their learnings about Infor’s investments in user experience and applications, as well as the company’ role as a competitor with SAP SE.

  .

App-centric approach to cloud strategy

While graphics have garnered Infor some positive feedback, it’s the company’s application-centric initiatives that customers say makes such a big difference. The strategic decision not to build its own datacenter also dominated discussion of Infor’s cloud strategy. Vellante and Kelly ruminated on Infor’s deicison to use Amazon AWS as Infor cloud infrastructure.

Without a datacenter of their own, Infor is able to focus on applications. Vellante suggested that Infor’s micro-targeted solutions help customers solve business problems quickly. Because the product comes so fine-tuned, customers are able to start with an off-the-shelf package that would otherwise take months of customization.

Big Data

Kelly called out that, though Infor’s granular focus on users and operational applications is positive, it needs to incorporate Big Data analytics as well. To be a successful services player, he suggested Infor infuse apps with intelligence, because data creates key insights and expects such insights will be more widespread in the cloud services industry moving forward.

SAP competition

As Infor invests more in research and development (R&D), Vellante pointed out that more customers are flocking to the Infor side. Established competitor SAP is losing customers who are looking for a “new way” of doing business that provides a functional road map, and is both fast and agile.

Kelly agreed, adding that Infor offers increased transparency around Return on Investment. It’s clear to customers, he said, that the investment in Infor pays off in the applications, which offer regularity of data and insight.

See the analysts’ entire segment below.

 .

Photo by SiliconANGLE