Infor unveils Internet of Things platform to connect enterprise devices with big data

Platform will feed connected device, sensor and app data into Infor's enterprise systems

Infor has made a play for the Internet of Things (IoT) with a comprehensive platform that feeds connected device, sensor and app data into the firm's enterprise software.

Pam Murphy, Infor's chief operating officer, introduced Infor IoT at the company's Inforum 2016 conference in New York, explaining how Infor approached the IoT platform with two objectives in mind.

"First of all we wanted to deliver on connected intelligence in order to unlock the real business value of IoT by being able to [use] the Infor applications that our customers use today," she said.

"Acquiring and transporting data from devices is the easy part. The more difficult part is bringing the intelligence derived from these devices and the data to the enterprise applications that we use to deliver business outcomes.

"Secondly, we wanted to deliver a scalable and consistent platform rather than delivering IoT as a set of custom projects, which is what has really dominated the IoT landscape today."

Instead of adding certain components to the IoT stack, such as dedicated analytics or data collection systems, Infor IoT presents a complete end-to-end platform that manages smart device connections, and collects, processes and analyses the data.

The platform then feeds the data into Infor's software suites from where intelligent and contextual actions and decisions can be made.

Murphy explained that the core idea behind Infor IoT is to commoditise the IoT for the enterprise world. Infor is effectively building IoT standards by offering a complete platform, which can help to inject some uniformity into the mire of different standards.

The company is targeting Infor IoT at several industries, and Murphy gave the example of using the platform for predictive maintenance in the manufacturing sector.

However, Infor faces stiff competition from enterprise software players such as SAP with its own IoT offerings and Microsoft with the Azure IoT Suite.