Re: XA Today

Thank you Ross. For the users like us who are still on the character based architecture, it's good to know that the future of XA is promising indeed.
Can you tell us what the SOA and Evolve initiatives are? Our affiliate mentioned SOA as being very important in the future but time did not permit an explanation and I want to give out VP a heads up on it.

Bryan Burns
iSeries Specialist
ECHO, Incorporated
Lake Zurich, Illinois

-----Original Message-----
From: mapics-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:mapics-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Ross Freeman
Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 4:11 PM
To: mapics-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [MAPICS-L] XA Today

Kevin's posting has set off another train of thought. Many of our customers are not much aware of Infor, and how it is different from the latter days of MAPICS. Some of you may have seen presentations from me on this topic, others may not.

Let me provide some little known facts about XA.

- #2 ERP in Infor by revenue
- Very close to #1 in revenue in North America
- Customer count has been essentially stable since 2003 (about 1600 customers, 2500+ sites)
- Annual retention rate over 97% (probably highest in the industry)
- One of Infor's "go forward" ERP platforms that 100% participates in the SOA and Evolve initiatives
- XA Development investment (Enrich) has been fairly stable over time, still maintaining one of the largest Development labs in Infor
- IBM has finally taken the cloud away from the System i platform - we have seen a full roadmap for the product going to 2015. No more doubts about XA's future because of the platform.

The perception that XA is being allowed to slowly dwindle away is 100% false. That may have been true of MAPICS (I believe it was), but it is not true of Infor. It is understandable that customers have seen less action since 2005 than they may have hoped. But let me share some of Infor's accomplishments over that period.

- Consolidated 30+ acquisitions, 98 separate business systems and 200+ GL reporting entities, into one. In less than three years, on Infor software (of course).
- Rationalized all internal business systems and processes across 150+ offices around the world
- Built unified global organizations in Sales, Marketing, Development, Product Management, and Administration
- Rebuilt a large number of damaged products, where the predecessor company was visibly failing their customers
- Conceived, designed, built and deployed a complete SOA strategy and architecture, deploying across 20+ major application sets (ERPs, Financial Systems, Distribution Systems, EAM, SCM...)
- Conceived and executed a $350 million development strategy across all key product lines, over and above regular ongoing investments for each product.
- Infor-ized the XA solution set, to enable XA to take advantage of the Infor strategy - same for all go forward products in Infor
- Conceived, built and launched the FLEX program company wide - in three months.
- Built and deployed a dedicated System i group - in five months
- Built new customer facing organizations to make sure we actively touch our customers on a regular basis - all 70,000 customers, plus reaching out to many more who have "left the family" over the years.
- Maintained solid financial results during the worst recession in recent memory

Infor's accomplishments in this short period are breathtaking, in my view. XA is a key player in this story. However, much of this was internal work, out of the view of our customers. It is understandable that customers did not see the activity, and felt a sense of drift around XA.

All of these efforts are bearing fruit this year. I believe all our customers will see increasing speed of delivery, decisiveness of action and longer term viewpoint. Our focus is on keeping our customers with us - and making sure we are still in business to be there with you.

Full disclosure - like Kevin, I have been in systems for close to 30 years. I have worked intensively with 13 ERP systems, as well as many other manufacturing systems. I've been a customer, consultant, salesperson, developer, designer, product manager, and more. I haven't done as many countries as Kevin has, only 18.

Infor has provided the opportunity for a great team to unleash their talents. You haven't seen a lot of that yet, but you will.

This is a statement from me as a person, having worked in all parts of the software business. This is not Infor marketing material, this is the truth as I see it.


Ross Freeman