General Consultant Discussion

This is an interesting outline of what Infor has been up to for the past 2 years. I hear echoes of Sage's product efforts in it ... although without the VC investment and hiring. It's metalayer sounds quite similar to sData. http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/enterprise_apps/232900910?pgno=1

Nice catch Jerry - I have always thought while companies were acquiring and growing (like Sage was) that it was very difficult to get a TRUE read on strategy. Rapid growth masks a lot of problems. Infor reads a lot like Sage during the early to late middle period of time when they were acquiring a bunch of products and making all sorts of unchallenged promises. Who could challenge the promises yet -- because it was too early. The company (Sage) did not yet have time to integrate all their ""catches"".... Fast forward another 3-5 years to present day Sage... And Computer Associates was at one time the granddaddy of the ""buy and milk"" strategy before financial impropriety caused the company to restructure. My takeaway: Never be fooled by these puff pieces in the press. Look to prior history of companies who have tried to do similar things. Thats how you'll discover the most likely outcome.

Yep, I'm not saying I agree that success will result from the Infor strategy. They have VC money in it, so they are under pressure for significant valuation growth. They've also done a deal with salesforce.com. sf invested some $$ into Infor (marketing-alliance scale $$, not VC scale) and Infor is integrating sf into Infor using force.com api and the Infor meta layer. We haven't heard the last of these guys.