It’s not easy being best-of-breed in anything — doing an expert job across a wide swath of vertical domains is almost unthinkable. But Infor Inc. has buried its nose deep in research and development in an attempt to do just that in the enterprise-grade software market. With Wall Street gnats screened off, it may have the breathing room to succeed.

Being a private company has allowed Infor to hone its brand from within, sans stock-market hysterics. “It’s a company that really knows who it is,” said John Walls (@JohnWalls21), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio.

Infor’s Chief Executive Officer Charles Phillips embodied the company’s quiet confidence in itself on the keynote stage during this week’s Inforum event in Washington, D.C., according to theCUBE co-host Dave Vellante (@dvellante). 

“He’s not a hype machine, unlike so many in this industry who are incredibly successful — Larry Ellison, Marc Benioff, others … love to hype what they do,” Vellante said.

There isn’t anything humble about Infor’s mission to own cloud-based enterprise apps, though. “It’s very hard to be both best-of-breed and full suite,” Vellante stated. But the company’s sharp attention to the particulars of various verticals might be the winning formula. 

“By going micro-vertical, they can claim both,” Vellante added. 

During theCUBE’s Inforum event coverage, Walls and Vellante discussed Infor’s advantage in being private, its rivalry with Oracle Corp., and its latest R&D investments. (* Disclosure below.)

Lost in transition

While Infor’s income statement is not exploding, its software as a service business is growing. The company continues to hammer away at its SaaS applications, focusing on pleasing customers with artificial-intelligence features.

“As a private company, they’re not subject to the 90-day shot clock,” Vellante said. This allows it to write its own narrative, which includes migrating its large install base to its new platform.

“Move, migrate — those are scary words for customers,” Vellante stated.

While Infor’s new platform entices with the full suite of micro-vertical apps, customers in migration are always targets for competing companies, according to Vellante. This is why Oracle is going after Infor’s customers now, hoping to intercept them en route to Infor’s new platform, he concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Inforum event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Inforum 2018. Neither Infor Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: Infor