7 of the Most Important Benefits of Infor’s Partnership with AWS

In March 2014, leading business software provider Infor announced a groundbreaking partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud services platform that delivers the infrastructure and compute power that businesses need for growth. This collaboration not only solidified Infor’s position as a leading cloud competitor, but it also enabled the two organizations to align their most important strategies. With a mutual goal to deliver excellent service to customers, drive innovation, and build quality cloud architecture, Infor and AWS are working together to deliver Infor’s enterprise applications through AWS’ highly advanced cloud infrastructure.

To this end, Infor has deployed its innovative CloudSuite applications through AWS. This decision has set the company apart from other vendors in the industry, which typically develop and operate data centers of their own. However, Infor has also used this partnership to improve its operations across the board, and it’s still reaping the benefits today. Read on to explore a few of the most important ways that the partnership with AWS has impacted Infor and its customers.

 

1. It’s widening Infor’s reach.

In order to properly serve its global customer base, AWS has implemented Availability Zones and service regions in locations all over the world. By leveraging these services, Infor has thus gained access to this vast network and benefited from AWS’ constantly-expanding reach. Instead of needing to establish its own international data centers, Infor has been able to launch products in Europe, Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa with little hassle.

This level of geographic reach makes it easier for Infor to deploy applications as close to its customers as possible, thereby eliminating latency. Moreover, AWS’ service regions allow Infor to provide data locality to its clients around the globe.

 

2. It’s improving compliance efforts.

Infor serves clients in a wide array of industries, many of which have stringent regulations and compliance requirements. AWS helps Infor meet these clients’ needs by maintaining high compliance standards for its fundamental cloud infrastructure. By collaborating with outside auditors and certification agencies, AWS provides transparency about its procedures, policies, and internal controls, and improves its clients’ adherence to such regulations as HIPAA, ISO 27001, and FedRAMP (SM).

AWS’ broad security certifications support Infor’s own focus on application-level compliance. In addition, AWS has bolstered Infor’s overall compliance by helping improve its baseline standards for the most important industry-specific certifications.

 

3. It’s delivering better elasticity.

AWS has provided Infor with its Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) web services, which deliver the elastic compute capacity that the company needs for application development and hosting. This highly flexible service is making it easier for Infor to run enterprise-level applications with different utilization levels and server arrangements. Amazon EC2 also makes it easier for users to adjust their capacity based on need. As such, Infor has been able to reduce its dependence on physical hardware that it would otherwise require to meet on-demand needs.

 

 

4. It’s bolstering all aspects of Infor CloudSuite.

Infor’s partnership with AWS has enabled it to do more with its CloudSuite applications than simply run them on the platform; it has also made it easier for Infor to deploy new, industry-driven services more quickly than ever before. In addition, AWS is making these applications more reliable for users by delivering them within a cloud environment that improves visibility. Through Infor’s collaboration with AWS, CloudSuite customers benefit from the latest cloud infrastructure advancements which optimize application performance.

 

5. It’s improving availability.

Infor works with more than 90,000 organizations across the globe that must operate at all hours of the day. From medical centers to manufacturers, these organizations cannot afford system downtime. Through AWS, Infor is able to run its products in numerous AWS Availability Zones (AZs) at once, which creates more than one point of failure. This setup not only mitigates the risk of system downtime, but it also enables these platforms to continue to operate should they experience any faults.

This level of availability also extends into the realm of business continuity. By leveraging AWS’ AZs and global data centers, Infor gives its customers a failover in case of service disruptions or disaster recovery events.

 

6. It’s boosting automation.

Automation was one of Infor’s key considerations as it initially migrated to the AWS Cloud. With the goal of automating the majority of its processes, the company leveraged services such as AWS CloudFormation. This platform has fully automated the process of provisioning for Infor’s applications and other infrastructure.

 

7. It’s delivering critical third-party tools.

Through its partnership with AWS, Infor has also gained access to the vast AWS Partner Network (APN). Collaborating with these organizations has enabled the company to use their expertise and additional third-party tools within the existing AWS Cloud infrastructure. To improve security both internally and through AWS, for example, Infor has worked with leading cloud security solutions provider Trend Micro. Infor has also leveraged Boundary’s services to boost network visibility and has worked with Dynatrace to enhance its capabilities in monitoring application performance.