How hungry are enterprises for industry-specific cloud applications? By honing such solutions, Infor Inc. grew its cloud revenue 60 percent last year, according to Stephan Scholl (pictured), president at Infor Inc.

“We were, at the enterprise scale, the fastest-growing cloud company in the world,” Scholl said in an interview today at Inforum 2017 in New York.

This is directly due to the investment Infor made in industry-vertical cloud apps three years ago, Scholl told Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Rebecca Knight (@knightrm), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. (* Disclosure below.)  

The ensuing research and development yielded CloudSuites. This collection of products adapted Infor’s industry functionality to the cloud and packaged it in easy-to-implement apps. Infor also offered to run the apps for customers and upgrade them automatically.

“That’s what cloud’s about,” Scholl said. The industry-tailored last-mile is where customers want to see differentiation among cloud vendors, and that’s why Infor beat the competition last year, he added.

“If we were a standalone cloud company, we’d be one of the largest cloud companies in the world,” Scholl stated.

Infor’s competitors are too stuck in the infrastructure mud to meet enterprises on their level, i.e., the application layer, Scholl argued. “All our [research and development] are at the application layer. We do some work at the integration layer, but most of our money is spent in the last mile,” he said.

Race gets real at last mile with zero-mod apps

Oracle Corp. and SAP SE court enterprises with mostly horizontal platforms and apps that require modifications, Scholl explained. “You can only build cloud-based solutions if you don’t modify the software,” he said.

How far can Infor’s vertical apps go without mods? Ferrari N.V. is an immensely complicated company using Infor automotive applications with zero mods, Scholl stated. The U.K.’s BAE Systems plc, a defense, security and aerospace manufacturer, is an Infor customer.

“It doesn’t get any more complicated than building an F-35 fighter jet; no modifications in their software that they have with us,” he said.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Inforum 2017 event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Inforum 2017. Neither Infor Inc. nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE