Infor Launches ION Services for ERP Application Integration

Last week, Infor, a leading provider of business software, launched Infor ION. Infor ION is a suite of cloud-based software services that will let companies easily integrate ERP applications, simplify the business process management, and share data reports. Infor targeted mid market companies while developing these services. They hope to help companies easily organize and analyze information to make business processes more efficient.

There will be four Infor ION services, including the Infor ION Desk, Infor ION Connect, Infor ION Event Management, and Infor ION Workflow. The Infor Desk will be a browser-based interface to configure all of Infor’s services. Connect will be a service focused on data sharing across different ERP applications, in the cloud. Event Management is a business process management service that will monitor the status of business activity. Workflow will enable automated document routing. Businesses who use Infor ION will easily be able to exchanged documents over several ERP applications so that collaboration and integration is easier. Users will not have to request certain documents because they will be able to access it with Infor ION, therefore saving time.

Application integration can be very difficult, but Infor ION makes it easier. Ken Vollmer, George Lawrie, and Mike Gilpin comment on application integration in Forrester, a market research company’s, article “It’s Time to Tame the ERP Integration Beast”. They said, “Integration challenges are often the foremost obstacle to getting the full value from packaged enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions … Integration with these systems has frequently led to significant complications because core ERP applications are often better at collecting information than at making it available in all the places it is required. Therefore, application development and delivery professionals should evaluate their ERP integration strategy and upgrade it to ensure that it rises to the level required today to support agile operations inside and outside the enterprise.”

Infer ION takes away the complications that the Forrester researchers mention. They make ERP application integration look easy. Soma Somasundarum, the Senior Vice President of Global Product Development at Infor, commented on the ION services. Somasundaram said, “Infor ION brings the world of on-premise applications and cloud computing together. Infor ION is designed to make it easier for every Infor customer to integrate and manage their data, no matter where the data resides and no matter what application created it. With this unprecedented simplicity of business document exchange, companies of all sizes will now have a better way to build and use business intelligence from across their entire operations, faster and more cost-effectively than ever before.”

Infor ION is easy to deploy. Users can download it in one click online. No additional hardware is necessary. The ION services will be released in the fourth quarter of this year.

Tags: business process management, Cloud ERP, ERP application integration, Infor, Infor ION services, ION services