With more than 71 million cloud users and over 170 products, Infor Inc. has focused on delivering a broad suite of business applications via software as a service. Its strong SaaS sales growth has propelled it from being a legacy on-premises software vendor to one that is generating significant revenue from cloud-based subscriptions.

“Seventy percent of our new sales are on SaaS,” said Charles Phillips (pictured), chief executive officer of Infor. “As a percentage of our sales, it’s the highest of any of our competitors.”

Phillips spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and John Walls (@JohnWalls21), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Inforum event in Washington, D.C. They discussed a potential public offering, how Infor’s business model drives revenue, and the success of a hiring evaluation tool. (* Disclosure below.)

Board is evaluating IPO

Infor’s growth has fueled speculation that it could decide to become a publicly traded company. Although technically still private, the company sells bonds on the public market.

Phillips indicated that Infor’s board of directors is evaluating a possible initial public offering. “In some sense we have the worst of all worlds,” Phillips said. “We have the discipline of being a public company and the scrutiny without the capital and the branding. Every bank on Wall Street is visiting us.”

One reason that Infor would be an attractive public investment is that it has managed to avoid losing revenue as large customers transition from on-premises deployments to the cloud. Infor’s Upgrade X program provides clients with application and management services as part of the migration.

“On-premise, we may have been one vendor with 30 other ones, but the whole reason customers want to get out of all of that is to move to the cloud and simplify,” Phillips explained. “We can’t take all of that with us; we have to have the full suite. We can move them, but it expands the size of the deal because we’re replacing all of these other products.”

In addition to its SaaS and cloud migration solutions, Infor has developed tools for the human resource community. One of these is Talent Science, a cloud-based, predictive analytics testing solution used for hiring.

Infor had a large casino customer in Las Vegas that wanted to use the product to improve the recruitment of blackjack dealers. After less than a year, Infor heard back from the casino requesting that the test be adjusted.

“They told us that winnings went up 30 percent, but everyone’s leaving the hotel in 24 hours because they lost all of their money,” Phillips recalled. “We don’t need it to be that good.”

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: SiliconANGLE