Cloud adoption across Australia and New Zealand remains ahead of the regional average, as global business application software provider Infor reports “phenomenal” growth across the world.
With strong momentum expected in 2015, and Cloud bookings up more than 200 per cent globally, Jo-Anne Ruhl, Managing Director, Infor Pacific says that across the Asia-Pacific region, 95 per cent of the company’s Cloud revenue is currently generated by A/NZ.
“We’re seeing exceptional growth across Australia and New Zealand,” says Ruhl, who is responsible for the go-to-market of Infor’s business in A/NZ.
“Particularly in the Cloud aspect of our business, with companies in both Australia and New Zealand fairly advanced in terms of its Cloud adoption.
“We’re finding that companies across A/NZ are more willing to adopt new technologies and display innovative attitudes to growth.”
Formerly VP of Oracle’s Tax and Utilities Global Business unit across APAC, Ruhl says the company is experiencing lots of growth in New Zealand specifically, with two cloud customers now on board.
Despite not revealing identities, Ruhl confirmed to Computerworld New Zealand that one of the Kiwi customers adopted the company’s CloudSuite Aerospace & Defence solution, becoming the first organisation in the world to do so.
A fully integrated, industry-specific solution suite deployed in the cloud, Ruhl believes the CloudSuite Aerospace & Defence solution adoption is proof that enterprise uptake of cloud on both sides of the Tasman is strong, strengthened further by the local hosting of Amazon Web Services data centres in Australia.
“I remember talking to customers in previous years and they all had a problem with their data being hosted in the US,” Ruhl recalls. “But as soon as AWS moved to Sydney, fears about data sovereignty and security have become much less.
“While businesses never know they have a problem until they do, these concerns are now a thing of the past.
“Now we can show businesses that we are local and can manage their data from Australia, it’s something organisations now take great comfort from.”
As reported during the company’s Fiscal 2015 Q2 reports, globally speaking, licence fees and subscriptions revenue increased 15 percent at actual currency rates and 17 percent in constant currency, compared to its fiscal 2014 recast Q2.
Furthermore, year-to-date, software licence fees and subscriptions revenue and non-GAAP software licence fees and subscriptions revenue increased 19 percent and 18 percent, respectively, while cloud bookings increased over 200 percent.
"Infor's cloud bookings and the explosive growth in our pipeline marks a turning point in the industry," said Stephan Scholl, president of Field Operations for Infor, following the results in December 2014.
"Infor is the first company to deliver industry suites in the Cloud, enabling customers to move their mission-critical operations, not just their edge applications, to a standard Cloud."
As a result, Infor now has more than 25 million users of its cloud applications, and industry-specific certifications in healthcare, aerospace and defence, and government with AWS across the world.
In witnessing a migration to a next generation cloud infrastructure that is more secure and cost-effective than proprietary data centres, Ruhl is quick to offer a reason for the explosive growth across A/NZ in particular.
“Most businesses now accept they’re moving to the cloud, it’s just a case of when and how,” Ruhl adds.
“Decision makers are seeing this and the key details they want to know is when they do move, how will they get the best bang for their buck in the cloud.”
With Infor’s applications built to cover a range of specific industries, such as manufacturing and the public sector, Ruhl says the company’s cloud portfolio is built by industry, on open standards.
“One of our key differentiators in the market is that we don’t offer a one-size fits all solution, we add layers of functionality for the verticals we support,” Ruhl adds.
“Most organisations are now global from the get go and through our flexible applications and cloud offerings, we can tailor for such needs immediately.”