Infor Carves Out Leadership Position in the Cloud

• In FY 2018, Infor recorded $3B in revenue
• The company also closed 13,700 deals

Large companies need technology to help manage their core business processes, otherwise called enterprise resource planning (ERP). Under Charles Phillips’ leadership, Infor is charting its own path in the enterprise software marketplace. In its annual report the company claimed to be the first ERP provider to make a complete transition to the cloud.

Why This Matters: Infor has carved out a strong position in the space, posting $3 billion in revenue for its fiscal 2018 year. Its main competitors SAP (SAP -0.72%) and Oracle (ORCL +2.02%) have taken a hybrid cloud approach. Using this strategy companies can maintain some flexibility by having a portion of their data in the cloud while holding onto their own data centers.

Companies that choose to transition entirely to the cloud stand to save on their costs over the long term. By the look of its deal activity, Infor’s cloud offering is attracting a lot of companies considering it closed 13,700 transactions in fiscal year 2018.

Infor will have to draw on a lot of creativity to continue to gain market share. Oracle and SAP are massive companies with a lot more capital to throw around in growing their cloud businesses. For example, Oracle acquired ERP provider NetSuite for $9.3 billion in 2016 to expand its reach in the sector. While Infor may not be able to make that kind of acquisition, the company surely benefits from Phillips’ past job as president of Oracle for seven years.

What’s Next: Keep an eye out for whether Infor pursues an IPO in the near future. There were rumors in 2016 regarding whether the company would go public. Instead the company took on a $2.5 billion investment from Koch Development Partners. With healthy revenue figures in addition to its leadership position as a completely cloud-based ERP solution, perhaps an IPO is back in the cards.

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