Your plan should cover hardware and software replacement, data recovery, and key configuration, restoration, or installation details.  It should include appropriate software license numbers, insurance numbers, and key contractor or supplier numbers. It should cover testing, validation, and performance criteria. Furthermore, you need to thoroughly test your recovery plan before you need it.

If you have any questions about disaster recovery planning please send an email to tsawyer@acumengroup.us.

“Infor’s commitment to move its headquarters to New York is another sign that international, high tech companies see this state as the place to be,” said Governor Andrew Cuomo. “I have repeatedly said that our number one mission is getting people back to work. This deal is an example of how we are working tirelessly to make sure companies know that New York is open for business.”

Infor expects to have one of the largest software engineering teams in New York City and access the rich pool of technical talent in the region. The planned technology campus the City of New York is building in conjunction with major universities was also an attraction for the company, along with the city’s accessibility for Infor customers from around the world.

“Infor’s relocation of its headquarters to New York City is another vote of confidence in our booming tech sector,” said Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. “This growth in the tech industry demands a large, dedicated work force, and that’s why our Applied Sciences initiative to build a new engineering school here is so important. It’s just one of the ways we are supporting the tech sector so that companies like Infor can grow and create jobs in New York City.”

“2011 has been a strong year for Infor, with three consecutive quarters of year-over-year double-digit growth that have fueled our decision to accelerate investment in product innovation by coming to New York’s Silicon Alley,” said Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor. “This state-of-the-art facility will enable us to hire and house developers and graphic designers to enhance the user experience and integrate social applications into the workplace, further advancing the speed of business for our customers. We also plan to build a customer center that showcases these innovations in an environment as compelling as the technology itself.”

There are other advantages of using “Virtual Machines”.  They are hardware independent, which means they can be moved from one brand of server to another without any re-configuration.  In a disaster the backed up machine files can be quickly loaded to new hardware.  In larger enterprises “Virtual Machines” can be moved from one host to another without turning them off.  In the event of hardware failure machines can automatically move to another host and restart in seconds.   This provides high availability and allows maintenance to be done with no down time.

If you have any questions about how Server Virtualization can be applied to your business please send an email to tsawyer@acumengroup.us.

There are many questions to consider when looking at cloud services.

• What products and services are best to move to the cloud?
• Who has your data? How fast can it be retrieved?
• How does the speed of the internet connection effect productivity?
• Can your company still operate if your internet connection is down?
• How does an outage at your provider effect your company’s operation?

This new offering will back up all your PCs and Windows servers to a local cloud, and then replicate this backup to an off-site cloud.  If a mirrored Windows machine fails, a virtual image of the machine can be created on the private cloud within a few minutes.  As your PC’s age and become unreliable, they can be replaced by “Thin Clients” while the same OS runs on the local cloud. Since all the PC’s files are being replicated in the cloud, data can be restored very quickly if there is a simple hardware failure or site disaster.

If you have any questions about how cloud technology can be applied to your business please send an email to tsawyer@acumengroup.us.

Infor, a leading provider of business application software with operations serving more than 75,000 customers, today unveiled Infor10, which features a consumer-grade user experience, complete industry-specific software applications and Infor10 ION Suite, a lightweight, middleware technology that changes the way enterprise software is managed.

“Our customers today already enjoy best-in-class applications with deep out-of-the-box functionality across a variety of highly specialized industries and micro-verticals. Infor10 sets a new standard for how work gets done. People at work have come to expect the same user experience they encounter in their everyday lives as users of Twitter, Facebook and Google. Infor10 and the Infor10 ION Suite bring that to the workplace,” said Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor. “This unique combination provides our existing customers the opportunity to dramatically upgrade and extend their investments in Infor applications, and it gives new customers the next wave of enterprise software innovation they’ve been seeking.”

ION Is the Foundation of Infor10

The Infor10 ION Suite is at the heart of Infor10. ION connects and integrates Infor and non-Infor applications, storing information in a common format and repository. ION allows information that flows among applications, analytics and social media streams to be accessed by users from their desktops, laptops and mobile devices.

Unlike conventional middleware, the lightweight ION technology is not layered on top of existing applications, but infused into them. As a result, ION makes integrations quicker, simpler and more reliable. “ION creates the mobile, social and flexible enterprise,” said Soma Somasundaram, senior vice president, Global Product Development, Infor. “Because it’s lightweight and built using open standards, ION installs much faster than heavy middleware and allows customers to get up and running quickly and efficiently so they can focus on their core business.”

ION enables new and existing Infor and non-Infor applications to work as a holistic solution, helping to create streamlined workflows and end-to-end business processes, while improving system performance speed and upgrades.

“We say ION is unbreakable architecture because extensions don’t break during upgrades,” said Somasundaram. “Most of our customers don’t want to be in the technology business. They would rather have IT be more agile and innovative, which is what ION allows them to do.”

Infor10 Consumer-Grade Experience

Infor10 Workspace is the front end of Infor10 and designed to deliver a consumer-grade user experience and change the way work is done for the average enterprise user.

“Enterprise software users want to work the way they live,” said Duncan Angove, president, Products and Support, Infor. “They can see what’s going on in the consumer world, where social media, collaboration and mobile devices combined with beautiful design, ready-to-use applications and agile technology have substantially improved the speed, value and productivity of the consumer experience. With Infor10, we are delivering a consumer-grade user experience that begins with a beautiful user interface.”

Infor10 ION Workspace unifies and presents all relevant information for each user on one screen, including role-based workflows, task and alerts, in-context business intelligence, event management, social media collaboration, consumer-like search capabilities, and business activity streams.

Infor10 Complete Industry Applications

ION also makes it possible to connect the rich functionality of leading ERP and best- in-class solutions from Infor and affiliate Lawson Software for specific industries.

Infor10 suites are targeted for Aerospace and Defense; Automotive; Chemicals; Distribution; Equipment Services, Maintenance & Rental; Fashion; Food and Beverage; General Manufacturing; Healthcare; High Tech; Hospitality; Industrial Equipment and  Machinery; and Public Sector.

“Generic one-size-fits-all software requires time-consuming configuration and doesn’t address the specific needs of an industry,” said Angove. “We believe that speed is the new basis for global competition, and we are building the functionality our customers need not only to address their industry issues right out of the box, but also to eliminate extensive customizations that lead to costly and risky implementations.”

Infor10 Reimagines How Software is Managed

The Infor10 release also provides flexible deployment options, including Infor’s CloudSuite Platform, to increase an organization’s speed and agility.

Customers can run their entire solution on Infor10 CloudSuite or can keep core enterprise systems on premise, while running other applications or services in the Cloud. The Infor10 CloudSuite Platform features a unified user experience and security, and enables two-tiered, hybrid deployments.

Whether customers access functionality from a software-as-a-service (cloud) model or on-premise deployment, they get the same functionality and look-and-feel. The only difference is in how their users connect to core applications. Customers can even move from one deployment model to another, since the same application code is used for all deployment models.

Also in v6.0 the Pricing Modifier enhancement to Enterprise added the flexibility of automatically providing additional discounts or increases to product prices based on sales ranks and geography.

Now, with the release of v6.1, Enterprise has the ability to create Multi-level Customer Pricing and Rebates. This enhancement allows you to assign multiple customer price types and customer rebate types to a specific customer or shipto account. This will enable your customer/shipto to participate in more than one pricing or rebate program, and qualify them to receive the lowest available price, while earning the highest available rebates.

Multiple pricing records can now be assigned to customers and/or shiptos using new setup functions in Accounts Receivable: AR Setup Customer Price Type (ARSPT) and AR Setup Customer Rebate Type (ARSRT). If either of these records exist, they are used to determine the price or rebate on sales orders by comparing them to the system price to determine the lowest price for the customer, and highest rebate.

Due to the added complexity this provides to the pricing and rebate structure, we recommend you limit multiple-level customer price types to only your best customers. Offering multi-level price types to too many customers may also have a negative impact on your profit margin.

Note: No changes were made to the logic used to calculate the ‘system’ price. The system price is still calculated using the existing pricing hierarchy. This includes all Price/Discounting records, whole order discounts, and special order discounts.

If you have any questions about the new pricing functionality or pricing in general, please send me an email at modell@acumengroup.us.