Infor is hoping a new social collaboration tool, updated middleware and user interfaces, as well as options for cloud-based deployments, will help cement its place as one of the industry's largest ERP (enterprise resource planning) vendors after SAP and Oracle.

Infor is planning to offer customers a cloud-based data warehouse and analytics platform based on its own ION and Business Vault technology as well as Amazon's Redshift service.

Infor, the software industry's third-largest ERP (enterprise resource planning) application vendor after SAP and Oracle, has been building out its own underlying technology platform in a bid to gain more revenue as well as provide customers with easier integration and system management. The company maintains that strategy is clicking as its ION middleware has become the fastest-growing product in the vendor's history.

Infor is being sued by a Puerto Rican tax authority on grounds that its failure to maintain software used by the organization racked up US$9 million in costs.

Business application software vendor, Infor, has acquired software-as-a-service (SaaS) based marketing resource management (MRM) software vendor, Orbis Global, to boost its Epiphany suite.

Infor has scooped up marketing resource management vendor Orbis Global in a bid to flesh out the capabilities of its Epiphany marketing suite. Terms of the agreement, which was announced Tuesday, were not disclosed.

Infor has teamed up with VMWare to help customers of its Infor10 LN ERP (enterprise resource planning) software run on VMWare's latest virtualization technology, opening a door to private cloud deployments and potentially lower infrastructure costs.

In a case that hinges on interpretations of software contract language and the respective rights of customers and vendors when it comes to third-party support organizations, 3M wants a court to declare that it doesn't owe Infor millions of dollars in fees.

The end of each year sparks an occasion for rumination on the past, as well as a longing gaze into the future. We shined up our crystal ball, rubbed our chin for a while, and sought opinions from industry analysts on what the future holds for the enterprise software market.