Infor executives have been hitting the road to promote the company's latest financial and expenses management offerings in the company's extensive software portfolio. John Stokdyk reports.
When IT Zone checked in with Infor 18 months ago, the focus was on R&D efforts to create a common service oriented architecture (SOA) for Infor's various software families, and a new style of role-based web user interface called MyDay. These elements have been extended to the latest release of SunSystems (formally known as Infor FMS SunSystems version 5.4).
According to Tim Truesdale, Infor's director of product management, the emphasis is less on the SOA these days than on the way it allows customers to connect their legacy applications into a framework where they can interoperate will all of the company's latest developments.
"The new version of SunSystems continues our commitment to enriching and refining the application as it stands," Truesdale said. SunSystems retains its original code base, but is able to connect into other Infor SOA programs via XML messages.
"With open messaging, existing applications can publish sales orders, purchase orders and journal entries and be just as much a participant as new components and customer components. We allow people to make choices about the components they use."
SunSystems is also being equipped to take in updates from the company's Master Data Management facility so it can map to the same codes used in other business units and applications, including a recent update to the web-based Expenses Management program formerly known as Extensity.
"We do see lots of opportunity with Expenses Management, SunSystems and other applications such as Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)," said Truesdale. "We're not talking about infrastructure and architecture; we're not selling that, it's just a means to an end. The advantages are the ease of integration and the business outcomes of being able to deploy those applications."
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John Stokdyk sadly passed away in June 2023. He had been with the site since 1999, rising from news editor to editor in chief, global editor and head of insight. As a roving editor, he investigated the profession's use of technology around the world. He devoted his spare time to technology history and an oddball collection of stringed...