Garry Parker, IFS Team Leader at Pro DBA, speaking about the next evolution of IFS Application – IFS Cloud

What are the key benefits of IFS Cloud?

IFS Cloud represents a significant change in tone – from being a set of applications that manage finance, HR and assets to being an enterprise service solution that provides end-to-end tools to deliver for customers’ customers.

As this is all off-premise there is no onsite installation. Everything is in the cloud and it’s managed off-site or in your own Azure environment. IFS offer the complete package so basically all you are doing is logging onto a website. It’s as simple as that!

It is also fast to adopt as a fresh install and has browser-based responsive technologies.

There has been a lot of buzz about the launch. What in your opinion is creating that excitement?

 IFS Cloud gives users the opportunity to deploy modules out of a basket of functionality which is presented as a single application on one database and common technology stack. Customers can deploy the solutions they need, when they want them, and expand by adding new capabilities seamlessly within one platform. That is pretty exciting!

As technology improves IFS are following this trend to move into the cloud which means faster transaction times, faster computing times and faster speeds. The agility is there with it being mobile so you can log onto the internet from your tablet and request transactions whilst on the move – the entire system is there in front of you, on your tablet, mobile etc.

Does it look different?

They have changed the look and feel of the new IFS Cloud compared to the Enterprise Explorer. I’ll give you an example. I did a demo this week, a very basic demo of the differences between the standard EE (Enterprise Explorer client) and then the Aurena version on Azure, and our client immediately said “I like that one. That looks much easier to use”.

IFS Cloud is essentially now just one application – whether the client is using ERP, HR, EAM or FSM – there is one platform, one data model and one experience! As Darren Roos, the CEO at IFS, said, this is now “a single, harmonised application”. That’s a big win for IFS customers!

What did you like about using it?

It’s certainly user-friendly. It has a very modern feel to the interface and has good functionality i.e. great configurations, lobbies, screens and branding. The enhanced lobbies feature is for efficiency of analysis and representation of information that really matters.

Will staff have to be trained to use it?

If you are familiar with EE you should pick up IFS Cloud quite quickly – but some training with the Aurena user guide is helpful. All our Apps 10 customers will have IFS Aurena installed as standard (not the 21R1 version) but not all are using it.

Anything you think could be added to it?

Until we see it being more widely used three or six months down the line, it’s difficult to say. There will of course be fixes and releases which will be deployed in the same way.

What is significant with IFS Cloud, is that the customer is in control. They control all the environments. IFS does not hold the customer’s data. So, if the customer wants to set up new functions there is nothing stopping them.

Previously IFS would hold a ‘build’ of the customer’s environment on-premise. So, if there were any problems, or if they needed to fix a release or build a release, IFS could then export it as a package for deployment in the customer’s environment.

Moving forward IFS will need access to log onto the customer’s environment to work on it. All work done will be in the customer’s build environment. Therefore, the customer has more control. A very positive development indeed!