Day 1 Wrap-Up, Inforum 2014 with Dave Vellante and Jeff Kelly @theCUBE #Inforum14 The datacenter-less approach to enterprise software makes Infor Inc. distinct among its competitors and a potential market disruptor. On the second day of the Inforum 2014 conference, Wikibon.org analysts Jeff Kelly and Dave Vellante kicked off their event coverage, live from theCUBE, ruminating on Infor’s role in the market (see the entire video below). They also discussed various aspects of Infor software that make it a company worth watching. Describing Infor as a company with a “different philosophy,” Vellante suggested its app-centric perspective is unique in the Big Data space. As a company, Infor has entirely sidestepped the database discussion and offers what Vellante called a “more traditional software application view of the world.” He suggested that Infor is turning back to time-honored business practices by remaining focused on customers, user experience, and applications. New additions to Infor’s suite of products The second day of the Infor conference saw several key announcements around financials, exchange infrastructure, and Human Capitol Management product. Vellante commented that the combination of financials, human capitol management, and probabilistic models help organizations identify, hire, train, retain, and improve their workers’ efficiency. Infor’s financials, Vellante said, offer “a single, unified financial suite. With an integrated view of financials, “there’s no need to bring in other pieces.” The human capitol management piece was of particular interest to Kelly, who pointed out that it represents a chance to “add more intelligence across the board.” When apps are infused with intelligence, he said, companies will gain insight into new business models. People science, said Vellante is “talent science.” When companies are looking for the right candidate, they need software that is easy to use, scalable, and predictive. Infor’s Probability models enable companies to model behaviors and build a performance profile into the software. Facing competitors Sharing that he believes Infor is going after Workday Inc., an on‑demand human capital management and financial management software vendor, and Oracle Corp., Vellante explained that Infor faces a “real chunk of opportunity” for Infor to gain a competitive advantage. Oracle in particular is forms-based, kind of slow, and doesn’t offer a great user experience, according to Vellante, presenting a drastically different experience from Infor. SAP SE, another established competitor, is also cloud-based. But because SAP manages its own data center, it had to spend a lot of time getting HANA, its in-memory, column-oriented, relational database management system, on board and, consequently, lost some focus on applications. SAP may present a different type of competition than Oracle, said Vellante, because it’s useful for legacy systems and has a pretty high success factor, but, like Infor, it’s not integrated. Handling Big Data analytics Despite Infor’s focus on application delivery in the datacenter, both Vellante and Kelly addressed the importance of Big Data analytics to Infor. Neither analyst was entirely sure “where they put it.” Infor’s Skybox tool had been floated as a repository, but not clearly defined as either a “data space” or a “data locker.”