Infor courts councils with cloud-hosted public sector suite

Business software provider Infor hopes to increase comfort with cloud-based systems by expanding its Infor Public Sector Suite with a cloud-based alternative that it hopes will better engage small government bodies facing the ever-present challenge of limited funding.

Infor Public Sector (IPS) is a modular suite of applications designed to assist local governments with asset management, regulatory and compliance management, billing, performance management, call centre management, citizen-access portal, HR, and enterprise performance needs. Infor claims over 350 customers worldwide including the cities of Seattle, Las Vegas, and Calgary, Canada.

"By deploying Infor Public Sector in the cloud, we will remove the need to purchase and maintain costly server hardware and systems, reduce backup and recovery tasks, and provide greater flexibility in meeting our changing demands on system load," City of Las Vegas DSP program manager Rick Virmani said in a statement. "We look to Infor as our cloud service provider due to their ability to ensure a sound offering for the entire hardware and software stack needed to run our solution."

By making the IPS apps available on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) basis, the company is hoping to expand the reach of the software stack, capitalising on the ability of SaaS infrastructure to reduce deployment costs and provide customers with regular software updates.

“Infor is helping public agencies prepare for the future by encouraging cloud-based deployment, which provides greater flexibility in terms of implementation and future growth, as well as a lower total cost of ownership,” said Infor senior vice president for public sector Kevin Curry in a statement. “As local and city government budgets continue to tighten, delivering our public sector products in the cloud is essential to help customers face their current economic challenges.”