Smartphone apps
August 10, 2011
By Manufacturing AUTOMATION
IFS, a global enterprise applications company, has announced its intent to develop and deploy additional IFS Touch Apps, a series of smartphone apps that extend the capabilities of IFS Applications, using the Windows Azure platform.
IFS Touch Apps is a set of apps to allow users of the IFS Applications software suite to access ERP and other functionalities through smartphones. IFS Touch Apps targets the mobile individual who works on the move, using a smartphone to perform quick tasks. Microsoft Corp. technology will be running behind IFS Touch Apps because the apps will connect to the IFS Cloud – a set of services running inside the Windows Azure cloud environment, where they serve as the backbone of the smartphone apps. IFS customers will be able to “uplink” their IFS Applications installations to IFS Cloud and benefit from the new IFS Touch Apps. This model of deployment via the Windows Azure Platform enables automatic updates of the apps and cloud services, reduces the overhead of providing apps for multiple smartphone platforms, and disconnects the apps from dependencies on specific versions of IFS Applications, the company says. In practice, this greatly reduces the effort needed by companies to adopt enterprise apps and keep up-to-date with the fast moving world of smartphones. IFS also announced its intent to offer IFS Touch Apps for the Windows Phone 7. As a result, IFS customers will be able to choose to run the first IFS Touch Apps on Windows Phone 7, iPhone or Android.
