Moving ahead in the direction of standardizing its product development on the Microsoft stack, Infor announced on Monday that it intends developing applications that run on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform; thereby taking the vendor’s close partnership a step further. 

The strategic move, aimed at giving an increased impetus to the industry’s shift away from on-premises enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, will result in the availability of the next-generation versions of Infor applications, including the ones for expense management, on Azure in 2011.

The Infor-Microsoft partnership will also result in the use of Infor’s recently-announced ION framework on Azure applications, to facilitate data sharing between applications and BPM (business process management), as well as allowing them to work in tandem with on-premises software.

In addition, Infor will also use Microsoft's SharePoint and Silverlight technologies for building out CompanyOn - a new user interface that will give the several application lines of Infor a common look and feel; and provide links into third-party sources like LinkedIn.

Noting that the Infor-Microsoft partnership will be advantageous for both the companies, Altimeter Group analyst Ray Wang said: “It was a huge coup for Microsoft because it shows large ISVs [independent software vendors] are still willing to bet on the Microsoft platform. It's also good for customers, in that now people are on a standardized platform, and a platform that has a future.”