IFS launches IFS Cloud

IFS launches IFS Cloud, a single platform that innately connects all its products to deliver the end-to-end capabilities a company needs to orchestrate its customers, people and assets and deliver amazing Moments of Service. Customers can choose to deploy best-of-breed or leverage the power of connecting their value chains across capabilities such as enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), human capital management (HCM), asset management (EAM) and field service (FSM).

With IFS Cloud, IFS offers a unique and single technology platform with one common user experience, one data model and one consistent support offering. IFS Cloud brings simplicity, choice and innovation to organizations that need to evolve to new business models, control costs, expand faster and serve their customers better. By implementing IFS Cloud, companies can easily scale and simply switch on new functionality (such as additional modules or new innovative capabilities) when the time is right for their business. 

Likewise, customers can choose how and where they deploy IFS Cloud, which has been engineered for the cloud but can be deployed on-premises with a choice of residency. Unlike many offerings, IFS customers will benefit from the same solution functionality and delightful user experiences, regardless of their deployment choice, without compromise. 

As a departure from competing, legacy suites and software portfolios that rely on complex and costly integrations, IFS Cloud is designed to make it easier and more cost-effective for customers to buy, deploy, run, and update their enterprise software. IFS Cloud marks the start of twice-yearly feature releases, giving customers the choice to move to the latest version as and when their business is ready. 

Darren Roos, IFS CEO, commented, “The path to digital transformation is not a simple one. Most businesses are complex and have intricate value chains, which is why few organizations succeed and even fewer vendors provide the tools to truly enable it. At IFS, our single most important goal is to deliver value to our customers, and we want to provide a clear path for them to evolve to new business models, compete and win.  

Roos continued, “Customers have told me that their main goals are to drive efficiency, control costs and to develop better products and services. We know that to achieve this, cloud is a prerequisite. Digital innovations need to be easily consumable and embedded into daily business operations, which is why I am confident that IFS will succeed where others have not. IFS Cloud is unique and delivers on customer centricity and experience as well as capabilities. I am proud to say we are again keeping our promise to deliver value so that customers can deliver on their Moment of Service.”

With digital innovations embedded, IFS Cloud’s architecture also includes new and improved application services for intelligent and autonomous business that can be natively leveraged across IFS products and across industries. This makes it practical and affordable for customers to take advantage of technologies such as machine learning (ML), augmented and mixed reality (AR/MR), artificial intelligence (AI), and internet of things (IoT), ready to use ‘out of the box’.  

IFS Cloud is being adopted by a number of pioneer customers across IFS’s focus markets of Aerospace & Defense, Construction & Infrastructure, Energy & Utilities, Manufacturing, and Service industries. One such customer is Cimcorp Group, a manufacturer of robotics and automation systems. 

Commenting on the benefits of IFS Cloud, Cimcorp Technology Director Jyrki Anttonen said, “The manufacturing and manufacturing service industries are very dynamic and highly competitive, which means we are constantly looking for technologies that will allow us to work smarter and faster than our competitors. Company growth is certainly a goal, but we are a global business and therefore we need to have visibility into our operations globally so that we can target efficiencies, control costs and devise news ways to create value for our customers. IFS Cloud is a platform with next-generation technology built for our industry and this gives us the confidence we need to achieve this and flank the competition.” 

IFS Chief Product Officer Christian Pedersen said, “IFS Cloud was designed and built to respond to customers’ needs when shifting to digital business models; something we never lost sight of over the last two years.” Pedersen continued, “We recognize that IFS Cloud will be pivotal in bringing success in a customer’s business and this shaped our approach in several areas: being able to make fast and informed decisions based on a single data model, being completely open with native APIs and providing one single upgrade experience so that customers can focus on what is important, which is to deliver exceptional moments of service to their customers.”

Also released is the first installment of IFS’s application lifecycle management capability, IFS Lifecycle Experience. IFS Lifecycle Experience features a portal that puts users in control of their application by fusing multiple touch points, to give them access to information, tooling, code, and permissions.