Gartner report gives high marks to Infor's Datastream

Infor on May 30 announced that Datastream has been positioned by analyst firm Gartner Inc. in the Leaders Quadrant of its Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Asset Management (EAM). Datastream, recently acquired by Infor, forms Infor's comprehensive EAM solution. Infor is the largest global software provider focused on delivering world-class enterprise applications to select verticals in the manufacturing and distribution industries.

According to Gartner, vendors evaluated in magic quadrant reports can be grouped into one of four categories: Leaders, Challengers, Visionaries and Niche Players. Gartner assesses companies based on "completeness of vision" and "ability to execute."

"Leaders are those vendors that would normally be included in shortlists worldwide for EAM products for mainstream industries that rely on assets," wrote Kristian Steenstrup and Billy Maynard, in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Asset Management, published March 29, 2006. "They perform profitably, grow their revenue and have a presence in all major markets. Their functionality is above average (catering to advanced maintenance strategies), and their technology and scalability are leading edge. These vendors would be followed and tracked by other EAM vendors."

Infor's success is based on Datastream 7i, the company's flagship EAM solution. Datastream 7i provides an asset management platform to hundreds of customers, including Oak Ridge National Labs, Nucor Steel, GlaxoSmithKline, and Miami-Dade County, Florida.

According to the report, "Best-of-breed EAM products (and computerized maintenance management system [CMMS]) have been migrating upward in scalability to cater to many hundreds of concurrent users, as well as multiple sites."

"We continue to achieve rapid growth in revenue and market share with Datastream 7i, and are pleased that Gartner placed our solution in the Leaders Quadrant," said Jerry Rulli, senior vice president and general manager of the Infor Cross Industry Solutions group. "We believe our success is driven by our ability to consistently deliver an effective combination of product and services, which translates directly into successful customer deployments. We plan to build on this success through the coming year with new product features and services to give our customers the world's most advanced EAM solutions."