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Infor, the provider of cloud-based business applications for specific industry sectors, has announced Mobility for Field Service (MFS), an application that allows customers to use its M3 enterprise resource planning (ERP) system from anywhere via a mobile device.

Mobility for Field Service v15.1.0 takes work orders that have been assigned to users in Infor M3 and displays them in a clear, easily digestible format that is easily understood on a mobile device. Colour-coded status indicators show how far each assignment has been processed, and workflow settings can help the user choose the most logical way in which to proceed with the assignment. Within each assignment, an intuitive layout of key data helps the user access the relevant information quickly and easily. This allows field users to simplify operations by creating a streamlined approach for working with M3 in the field.

The mobile solution uses Infor Ion middleware for transactional integration between the user’s mobile device and M3.  A run-time license for ION is provided to customers that are not currently using the middleware system.

MFS is currently available for tablets running on Android 4.4 or later and Windows 8.1 or later, as well as personal computers running the Windows operating system. Support for the iOS operating system is currently planned during 2016.

Innovative components include: integration for Infor document management, interconnected data sourcing and reporting, and an administrative toolbox that incorporates quick configurability features.

“As the equipment-centric industries continue to evolve and modernise, the technologies that support day-to-day operations must also mature and keep pace with the user. It is with this in mind that we created Infor Mobility for Field Service, which facilities access to strategic data from wherever the user may be located,” said Brian Dunks, product director, M3 Product Management, Infor. “This solution has been thoughtfully designed in response to the needs of our customers, to ensure that all users, including field technicians, are suitably equipped with the same high-quality tools that are utilised throughout the enterprise.”

 

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IFS, the global enterprise applications company, has announced a number of updates to its ERP enterprise software suite IFS Applications 9. New features include  in-memory capabilities,  enhanced visualisation of manufacturing processes, extended support for rental management and improved group consolidation functionality.

Part of the in-memory solution is IFS In-Memory Advisor, which helps customers apply in-memory technology to the areas of IFS Applications where it will yield maximum effect, or if so desired, run the entire application in-memory. By using in-memory, users can run analytical queries hundreds or even thousands of times faster than before. With compression ratios of three to ten times, even terabyte-sized databases are possible to run in-memory.

The release also includes significant updates to the manufacturing component, such as enhancements that let users action production issues directly from the IFS Manufacturing Visualizer. In addition, the visualiser has been equipped with new charts to optimise production planning. The IFS Quality Management module also includes several improvements such as acceptance sampling.

IFS’s rental management capability contains numerous new and improved features as well as major usability enhancements. The solution now allows users to associate specific work orders with external or internal equipment rentals.

The IFS Financials component has been updated with extended support for group consolidation, including advanced analysis of consolidated balances using IFS Business Analytics.

IFS is also launching a new support model based on quarterly updates of IFS Applications. Thanks to the new layered application architecture of IFS Applications 9, updates can be implemented quicker and easier than in previous versions. The result is that customers can benefit from the very latest product enhancements faster and at a lower cost.

“Following the successful launch of IFS Applications 9 earlier this year, we are very excited to release this first update, which includes both new and enhanced features,” IFS CTO Dan Matthews said. “Along with the feature updates, we are also happy to reveal a new update delivery system. This takes us a major step closer to our vision of providing our customers with ‘evergreen’ business applications, allowing them to enjoy the benefits of our latest and greatest software at a significantly lower cost.”

 

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Today’s world of industry is evolving at a faster pace than ever before. Agility is key to surviving and thriving in this modern era and agility in service can be the difference between you and your competitors writes Tom Bowe of IFS.

At IFS we talk a lot about business agility, because we believe organisations that are able to respond rapidly to internal and external environmental changes without losing momentum or vision will be game-changers in their field. Why is being adaptable and flexible so important in today’s business world? The world is changing at an exponential rate. The youngest generation of the workforce is further removed from those leaving the workforce than ever before.

Then, of course, you have the learning lessons of those businesses that failed to respond effectively to the rapidly changing technological landscape. Nokia failed to recognise evolving customer demands in the smartphone market and ultimately were destroyed by Apple and Android’s fast paced R&D and delivery cycles. They were the world’s dominant mobile-phone maker but by the time Microsoft bought them in 2013, they claimed just three percent of the global smartphone market. The New Yorker put it aptly, stating; “Nokia’s failure resulted at least in part from an institutional reluctance to transition into a new era.”

Agility is something that will not only allow your business to survive and keep up with an ever evolving market, but it will also give your organisation a competitive edge, particularly in the service sector. This flexibility must be driven internally with a scalable approach. The buy-in must be company-wide, and one place to start is with your processes and systems. The implementation and application of ERP software is most often considered traditional, rigid development, but that is not necessarily the case. ERP software from IFS is built with an architecture that lets you pick and choose what you need for your business. It is optimised to be the best option for service organisations, it is user-friendly, and developmentally adaptable and scalable.

 

Imagine having this flexibility and usability across your organisation, driving your service as a profit centre. An integrated service management platform gives you the consistency, reliability and speed to react in real-time to real-world events. It is an enabler for agility. An integrated solution is provided all on the same platform, so changes to business processes and workflows don’t need to be implemented across multiple systems. This means that processes and workflows are applied seamlessly across the organisation, ensuring efficiency, productivity and accuracy of information. Implementations of multiple systems take time, are tied to prohibitive costs, and are fraught with risk. With one fully integrated system rather than multiple systems connected together, you as an organisation benefit from speed of change, ease of change, reduced costs, and less risk.

Having a fully integrated system gives your organisation true visibility into not only operations, but the field as well. From call intake to financials, the entire process is documented, tracked, and easily accessed at any point during the entire service life-cycle. This gives an organisation visibility of day-to-day activity, and business intelligence needed to forecast accurately for the future. Imagine a flexible system that automatically applies certain determined processes to specific workflows, that identifies parts needed for specific jobs and then instructs technicians on what procedures need to take place during certain projects.

An agile system provides automation and optimisation, coupled with complete configurability and usability, allowing you to operate on a level that continually ensures success. Business agility is particularly important when it comes to service. Customer demands are at an all-time high, thanks to social media and the instant gratification culture created by having things available, immediately, at our fingertips. Service organisations must meet, or better yet, exceed, these expectations.

 

Agility in service not only drives speed-to-market, but also speed-to-delivery, which creates a competitive edge. So what can you do to achieve this agility when it comes to your software solutions and business processes? Evaluate the challenges and failings you have in relation to your current systems and delivery. Consider replacing your current back end system with something that will give you flexibility as your organisation grows internally and externally.

Often with larger, monolithic systems, internal change is static or too complicated to be effective. IFS Applications 9 is able to provide a business edge when it comes to visibility with perhaps the industry’s first user-configurable role-specific interfaces in IFS Lobby, enhanced usability within existing mobile service management tools and strategic customer relationship management (CRM) embedded directly in the applications for real-time visibility and control over the customer lifecycle.

Change the game by approaching the market with a system that will give you the visibility and flexibility needed to truly operate in the fast changing service industry. By making this fundamental change to integrated service management, you will be more prepared for external change, including trends like IoT, share economy, drones, and more. With a foundation based on agility, your organisation is guaranteed to adapt, no matter the situation.

 

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What should businesses consider when deciding whether an On-Premise or a Cloud solution is the best fit for their business? In Part One, we explored the attractions of the Cloud. In Part Two we take at look at why some field service companies still prefer an on-premise solution.

Judging by the amount of publicity recently about the Cloud and its benefits for business, you might think that every company is planning to migrate IT systems to it, including ERP and field service software, or at least thinking about it.

Filter out the noise, though, and it becomes apparent that there is resistance out there and for reasons other than mere reluctance to adopt a new way of managing the company's IT infrastructure. So why might on-premise still be best for your company?

Connectivity

A hosted cloud-based field service may not suit your business, advises Simon Spriggs, account manager Exel Computer Systems. "One reason many companies retain an on-premise ERP solution is the unreliability of their broadband connection. Broadband speed has a major impact on the efficient running of the business. It's not just field-service data going to and fro down that pipe, but everything the company does electronically. If the connection to the Internet fails, you won't be able to communicate with your engineers, manage workflows or give customers real-time information."

[quote float="left"]One reason many companies retain an on-premise ERP solution is the unreliability of their broadband connection.

 

Legacy systems

"Organisations which have made a big investment in data flows are naturally reluctant to migrate all their activities to the Cloud," points out Steve Mason, Vice President International Sales for Streetsmart, Click Software's service management app for SMEs and SMBs. While Click has been one of the pioneers of Cloud solutions, it also has a long heritage of providing on-premise solutions to customers who prefer to keep their activities behind the company walls. Mason likens the current debate to similar discussions that took place when companies migrated from investing in their own mainframes to having virtual servers. "It took time to build trust in those virtual systems. Moving all your processes to the Cloud is a major step: it takes time and people to plan it without disrupting normal business activities. Companies may well have more urgent priorities."

Larger companies will have made a significant investment in Enterprise-class software ERP and won't want that diluted by going to the cloud, accepts Mason. "Companies will have customised legacy software they are reluctant to adapt or processes they are not yet ready to change. They may also have a long-term contractual commitment to their systems integrator or software supplier."

When ERP systems were developed the need to incorporate mobile workforces was minimal" points out Neil Lewis, Consulting Director, EMEA Sales, ServiceMax. "Mobility projects were silos within a company. Today, not only are there much larger numbers of mobile workers, they need greater integration with those on-premise ERP systems from customer databases to accounts."

 

ERP solution providers have bought mobile solution providers to bridge the gap between ERP and mobile, he points out, but integrating old and new technologies is never straightforward. "How do you ensure the same employee can access the ERP from the office and from their mobile device. It might require modifications to the ERP or to the mobile system to get it to work and that is trickier with some ERP system than others. ServiceMax operate a single platform that automatically takes care of any device the field engineer is using. Configuration is done in one place and automatically deployed to the various devices."

Half-way house

Some companies have adopted a half-way house strategy in which they retain on-premise ERP, but migrate some activities to the Cloud, particularly those with a large customer-facing elements such as CRM and field service. "CRM was in the first way of Cloud migration because the need to deliver excellent customer service required greater integration with internal data silos than is often possible with legacy ERP systems," points out Mason. "Start with those apps which will leverage the most immediate gains to the business, make data streams more agile and easily-accessible from mobile devices, " advises Mason.

The complexities of integrating mobile workflow processes into legacy data streams is one reason field service solutions are often in the Cloud while ERP systems. "If your field service solution is browser-based, a lot of the integration issues are taken care of," remarks Spriggs. "It also future-proofs your investment."

Most of the field service software companies can integrate a Cloud-based field service app or platform with on-premise ERP systems. "Solarvista LIVE will connect to virtually any on-premise system via our NET technology which is designed to connect on-premise systems (private) to systems in the cloud (public)," points out Paul Adams, Marketing and Development Director, Solarvista. "Our connection tools support the major communication protocols, so you can be sure your data is secure."

"We have found that the service management industry is a diverse bunch with different requirements so we offer the ability to Pick ‘n’ Mix," says Colin Brown, Managing Director, Tesseract. "Some customers take the rental and support option but would rather install the software on their own server; other customers require remote hosting and support but they prefer to buy the software and others want the whole SaaS package of hosting, rental and support. With all three options, the internet and/or an intranet are the delivery routes."

 

Whether on-premise or Cloud solution, productivity will be affected if engineers are unable to work unless they are connected, so any mobile app should facilitate that, says Adams. "Our Mobile apps are designed for field-based users and operate on an occasionally-connected basis."

It's a mistake to assume that all field service platform solutions include off-line capability and automatic synchronisation, warns Lewis. "Engineers need to be able to download their jobs for the day, update schedules and customer history, for example, without being connected, and to have all that data automatically synchronised without manual intervention when communications are restored."

Security

While concerns over security have abated somewhat, some organisations remain sensitive about their data being in the hands of a third-party. With on-premise-solutions, all software resides behind that wall. Your own IT people can check authorization attempts and manage system access. There's always some risk involved in moving systems and data outside the physical walls of the business, which is there is so much emphasis on choosing the right Cloud platform provider and on service level agreements if you do go that route.

Some service organisations operate in industries where there are strict compliance and regulatory rules. Some sectors require high levels of access security, making on-premise solutions the pragmatic solution. However, bear in mind that asking mobile workers to go through myriad layers of protection to gain access to the system will have a detrimental effect on productivity.

 

IT resources

Don't under-estimate the IT skills and cost of investing in an on-premise solution, advise our experts. "Do you have the resources to manage IT requirements internally, including server management? What is the budget and the available IT resource to manage things on-premise going forward?" These are key questions, says Simon Spriggs. "If there are any concerns about the level of IT commitment required, the Cloud may be the way to go. However, it is worth remembering that the service model is always a more expensive option long-term than the outright purchase mode." This is especially true if you already have server agreements in place, he adds.

In conclusion

As with many aspects of field service, the starting point when deciding whether to adopt an on-premise or Cloud strategy for your IT needs should be to ensure you have a full understanding of your business processes and requirements and those of your customers.  Do listen to the pros and cons but ultimately only you can decide which is best for your organisation.

 

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Enterprise applications company IFS has announced that Kanes Foods one of the UK’s leading suppliers of fresh prepared foods, has chosen IFS Applications 9 to replace its legacy ERP systems.

Founded in 1990, Kanes Foods now has an annual turnover in excess of £100m and supplies over 3.2 million packs of fresh produce to the UK’s leading supermarkets every week. In order to support its rapid growth, Kanes Foods needs to update its current landscape of disparate systems with one, fully integrated ERP solution.

“With IFS Applications 9 we will have a system that supports the business through the entire supply chain – from procurement, raw material handling, production and final shipment to our customers,” commented Mark Harris, Production Director at Kanes Foods. “In addition, IFS Applications 9 will allow us to replace a number of stand-alone systems, such as quality management, plant maintenance, payroll, HR and time & attendance giving complete visibility across the business.”

 

Kanes Foods operate in a fresh produce environment, with much of the product arriving, being processed and dispatched within the same day; as a result speed and accuracy of data capture is imperative. That is why the deployment of a number of IFS mobile solutions will be critical to the implementation project. Kanes Foods will use IFS Warehouse Data Collection for the reporting of all movement of goods throughout the process. In addition, IFS’s mobile solution will be utilised by over 100 maintenance and quality technicians – to allow real time reporting on the shop floor.

Paul Massey, Managing Director of IFS Europe West, said “we are excited to welcome Kanes Foods into our growing list of food customers. It is encouraging to hear that the breadth of the IFS solution, along with our ability to deploy functionality to a mobile workforce, were key factors in the company’s decision to work with IFS. We look forward to a long and successful partnership.”

 

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So far in our exclusive interview with Paul Massey, Managing Director of IFS, we’ve taken a look at where Applications 9 sits against previous milestones in both Massey and the Swedish ERP provider's history in part one and then in part two we looked at whether the field service world is finally ready for the Cloud and IoT.

Now in the final part of this interview the conversation turns to the impact of consumerisation on enterprise software and why being an ERP provider can be a double edged sword for IFS when it comes to working with Field Service companies….

Given the trend towards consumerisation in enterprise software across recent years it is evident that this is something that is ingrained within the IFS development mentality.

“It is getting bigger and bigger,” admits Massey. “I’ve been around a few years and it just wasn’t as relevant before because for example the first graphical interface in work someone used was probably much more up to date than the software they used in their personal life. Now its completely the other way around. Our challenge is sometimes our applications may look really old and dated compared to what they use on their tablet or what they use on their PC at home.”

“That’s becoming more and more relevant to people looking at our applications and valuing them against other applications. If the users don’t like the application, then it is much harder to get them to use it irrespective of the business benefits and everything else. That’s really sometimes an intangible but very significant hurdle to get across.”

 

“So since 7.5 with the .net release the UK has been a big focus of what we are trying to do because if you don’t get their hearts you wont get their minds. That’s the challenge: you can have as much complex detailed functionality as you like but if the end user can’t use it in a relatively intuitive way then it’s wasted.”

As the conversation drills down to more specific field service side of their offering I was keen to see if Massey, felt that being an ERP provider was a help or a hindrance to them in terms of how they approach field service. Particularly given that they essentially have to separate offerings in the space.

“I think being primarily known as an ERP provider is a bit of a double edged sword as far as field service is concerned,” Massey begins. “We do have customers that use the original IFS service management functionality which is very much best suited to being at the back end of something where you’ve manufactured it, you commissioned it and then you maintain it. So your following the whole asset lifecycle and its probably a more complex asset maintenance scenario where there is a field service element but its part of something wider and in that story the whole integrated ERP approach is really powerful. All the data moves from one phase of the lifecycle to the next, seamlessly.”

“Whereas you’ve got another set of people who are looking purely at field service for who having an ERP is almost an anathema because they want a very light footprint: field service with probably mobility and scheduling so the advantage to them of integrated finance, HR, inventory and a complex infrastructure is much less evident and almost in some cases even a negative.”

 

“So it’s about understanding the audience, understanding what a particular customer wants and that’s why we have the two offerings that we have in field service -  the FSM product as well as the embedded service management product as well. Plus then they’ve obviously got mobility which can talk to both of those things.”

“Sometimes it’s a challenge when we talk to a prospect to understand which sort of flavour of service do they want. There are some obvious things like the number of resources your scheduling, the geographical coverage or whether they have some specific end functionality which can tend to push you in one way or another but ultimately it is about understanding what the customer wants at the end of the day. It’s a fairly glib cliché but its true.”

“If we are into highly integrated service management solution space then we think we can absolutely compete with everyone and that’s why we are strong in Defence and areas like that because it is a more complex typical service solution.”

“On the simpler field service side we believe some of the things that we have done in scheduling, in mobility and with the latest release of the field service product we believe we can compete as a standalone with anybody as well.”

“I think particularly our close integration with our scheduling application gives us some real benefits,” Massey continues. You’ve always got the question of which version of mobility do you want you’ve got Android, IoS Windows and all those things but we certainly believe with the two offerings we can cover all the bases.”

“That’s why we’ve invested so heavily in service over the last few years with the acquisitions made and the functionality we’ve added in these releases. We see it as a big area of growth for IFS going forward. It’s a massive area and in most geographies that sector is still growing very strongly. Service continues to be a major focus for us and hopefully our investment decisions will pay off.”

 

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In the first part of this exclusive interview with Paul Massey, IFS, Managing Director we looked at where he felt the recent announcement of IFS Applications 9 sat against previous milestones within the Scandinavian company’s history.

Now in the second part of this interview we look at Massey’s thoughts on the Cloud and IoT, plus whether he was ready for the reception to the most talked about new tool in Applications 9 – the lobby function…

Head in the Cloud

One of the big announcements at the recent IFS World Conference was the launch of a fully managed cloud. However, many of IFS’s existing clients have already invested significantly within the infrastructure to run previous iterations of the ERP solution so is this a platform that is geared towards winning new business I asked Massey.

“From a marketing perspective of course the managed cloud is going to be aimed at winning new business. It’s a good coherent and deliverable Cloud story.” He began

“But in terms of the uptake I think it’s going to be out to our customer base quicker. Obviously there is a big customer base to shoot at and we only bring in so many customers each quarter.”

“So whilst an increasing proportion of those will be on cloud the bigger potential market for us is obviously the existing customer base. As part of an upgrade proposal we can try to convince them to go to the managed cloud and I think actually some of the benefits and return on investments are actually more tangible for the existing customer base than they are for new customers because they understand whats involved in running IFS, deploying new releases, managing the application, managing the database. They already know the importance of resilience and uptime so potentially it’s a very easy sell for us.”

“So I think in terms of the uptake the momentum will be generated from the existing customer base. But that in itself will obviously provide us with more references for the business.”

The managed Cloud solution is a direct result of the IFS’s close partnership with Microsoft. Which of course leads to questions around yet another disruptive technology on the horizon namely The Internet of Things. Whilst there has been a lot of discussion around IoT and Field Service it’s not really been as embraced as fully as some may have thought by now. Perhaps partnerships such as IFS and Microsoft could be the next stone to that wider spread adoption?

“I think so” Massey replies when I put the question to him “Its certainly ticking a few more boxes that actually facilitates some of the benefits of IoT because with a hosting platform like Azure behind it that provides a lot things from the reliability and scalability, the security of data, and all those things that people are sometimes a bit frightened of when people talk about automating”

 

“Having data moving around between machines and the cloud, those are real life concerns that classical ERP and companies using ERP in that classical way are very frightened of.” He adds

“It’s not just to do with the IoT but the whole security of Cloud computing is approached the same. But just the fact that it’s Microsoft if you engage with them they’ve got a really good story about security which does take a lot of the potential concerns off the table I think it’s another facilitator effectively in terms of IoT meaning something tangible to people.”

The killer app?

As we return our focus to the Announcement of Apps 9 I reflect that the biggest buzz in the break after the initial sessions was all around a new solution called Lobby which allows individual users to have all of the data they need for their own specific roll or project in one easy place. It’s easily configurable, and a first initial look suggests it could be a powerful tool.

So what were Massey’s thoughts when he first encountered the idea, was it always a case of knowing that this would be the ‘killer app’ that would resonate so well with his customers or was he taken back by the overwhelmingly positive response?

“I think to some extent we’ve had similar technology in the past and through portal technology but because its’ now much more embedded in the application and it’s easier to set up and quickly show some real practical use of it” he explains.

 

“Yes I do think it will be the sort of headline feature that we are pitching it to be as one of the perennial challenges in selling ERP applications is presenting to the prospect the potential of all the information being at their fingertips. There is always a myriad of data in an ERP system it’s just a matter of getting at it in a useful way. So I think it’s a really graphical and hopefully relatively simple way of demonstrating that there is so much data that you can choose what data you want and how you present it .” he expands

“As a way of attracting attention to the depth of functionality beneath it in the ERP application I think it is really good and hopefully the technology in how to deploy it and customise it is straightforward enough for people to understand that it is easy to get it up and running.”

Look out for the third part of this exclusive interview as we turn our attention to the impact of consumerisation on enterprise applications…

 

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Continuing our series of interviews with industry leaders, Kris Oldland took the opportunity to sit down with IFS Managing Director, Paul Massey at the IFS World Conference in Boston last month. Against the backdrop of the launch of the swedish ERP provider’s latest product suite Applications 9, the conversation looked at both Massey and IFS’s journey across the last twenty years or so…

It’s been a busy month for IFS with a raft of new developments announced at their 2015 world conference including the launch of IFS Applications 9, key partnerships with Accenture and Microsoft, the launch of a Managed Cloud Solution plus a number of improvements to their field service offerings.

Field Service News Editor Kris Oldland spoke to Paul Massey to discuss what these announcements mean for the Scandinavian based company.

With so many big announcements coming in the first morning of this years world conference it felt like a sensible idea to try and put this into context of the near twenty year journey Massey has been on with IFS.

“Back when we became IFS back in early 1997 that was when the product was becoming graphical” Massey begins.

“There was a long history with my company Avalon and IFS who at the time were our Scandinavian distributor. Basically Avalon didn’t make the transition from character to graphical so IFS acquired most of the assets of and at the outset it was all about that new graphical user interface along with the component architecture story that IFS already had. So for us that was the first major milestone and in a way that was the first wave of internationalisation for IFS.” He continues.

Indeed IFS had been a very Scandinavian centric company before that point with one operation in Poland but little else beyond there home market.

This all began to change in the the late nineties as following on from the UK acquisition France and Germany and then a US acquisition.

As Massey explains “The first three or four years of our time with IFS was all about becoming an international company. There was a massive amount of investment in that area in sales and marketing functionality to cover other markets etc so that was a big investment period for IFS so in the early noughties there were some financial difficulties from a financing point of view because that was such a period of aggressive expansion. I wasn’t involved in the senior management then as I am now but I’m guessing they saw that was required to get a global footprint as quickly as possible.”

 

In fact this aggressive expansion plan resulted in a marked a period for IFS between 2000 and 2004 when there was negative growth. However as the world faced an economic crisis in 2008 IFS had already taken their hit and as competitors started to suffer they emerged as a healthy, profit making organisation.

“We’d finished spending our money and were set to reap the benefits of our investments” Massey admits. “We managed to more than survive that phase because it definitely impacted on others much more than it did us. We continued to grow as we moved from a negative cash flow to a really positive cash flow and we came out the other ends of that in a very healthy state.”

But what about the product how did evolve also?

“Having gone through the transition to graphical interface right at the beginning the next major milestone was enterprise explorer, the .net client in the Apps 7.5 release.” Massey explains.

 

“That was the next technology milestone from IFS’s point of view from then all of the releases i.e. 7.5 then 8 and now 9 have been more heavily focussed on broadening out the level functionality in each of the industries we target and obviously keeping the technology up to date.”

Which brings us up to Apps 9 which has brought a number of new features that had the delegates of their world conference more than impressed (see page 48)

“From a technology point of view I think the Layered architecture and some of the stuff we are doing with in-memory optimisation (which will be in an update of Apps 9 a little later in the year) is really important.” Explains Massey “You’ve got to keep the functional and technical streams running together in parallel which I think we’ve done. I think there is enough of both of those things in this release to get the customers interested in it.”

Look out for the second part of this exclusive interview where the conversation turns to the Cloud…

 

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