When the investment arm of Koch Industries Inc. paid $2.5 billion for a major stake in Infor Inc., the move was seen as another “traditional company goes digital” story. The extent of Koch’s interest in Infor became clearer today when it was announced that the business applications provider will implement CloudSuite — a benchmark suite for cloud services — for Koch’s 120,000 employees.

“It will be one of the largest global implementations ever, of any financials project, of any HCM [Human Capital Management],” said Charles Phillips (pictured), chief executive officer of Infor.

Phillips spoke with Rebecca Knight (@knightrm) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during Inforum 2017 in New York. They discussed details surrounding the Koch partnership, the evolution of Infor’s business analytics strategy and the company’s reliance on Amazon Web Services. (* Disclosure below.)

Under-budget project attracted Koch’s interest

The deal with Koch began when Infor steered a successful implementation project at Georgia-Pacific Corp., a Koch company. “Word travels when you come in under budget,” Phillips said.

Phillips subsequently met with the company’s chairman and chief executive officer, Charles Koch, and the two gained an instant rapport. “The more technical the conversation became, the more animated he got,” Phillips stated. “We hit it off very well.”

Phillips indicated that Koch now has four representatives on Infor’s board, including the company’s chief financial officer and the president of Georgia-Pacific. And there’s a weekly call with Koch senior executives.

“These people know how to execute. They’re actually pushing us right now,” Phillips said.

Infor will be considering “other industries” to enter, along with “a few acquisitions that we’ll probably consider,” Phillips stated, but he but did not provide further details.

Phillips also described his company’s acquisition of Birst Inc., the business intelligence and analytics platform, as a response to customers who wanted a different approach than they were getting from competitors. “They wanted us to be the analytics layer, a system of record for analytics because other companies don’t want to do that,” Phillips explained. “SAP or Oracle say, ‘Just use all my stuff; I don’t want to connect anybody else.’”

Asked about Infor’s longstanding relationship with Amazon Web Services Inc. for cloud services, Phillips said that it gave his company advantages over running its own operation. “We take advantage of it, because it’s cheaper for us to do it that way and we get the scale that we need and we get it in multiple countries.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Inforum 2017 event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Inforum 2017. Neither Infor Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE