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| Industrial and Financial Systems, IFS AB | |
|---|---|
| Type | Public (OMXS: IFS B) |
| Founded | Linköping, Sweden (1983) |
| Headquarters | Linköping, Sweden |
| Key people | Alastair Sorbie, CEO |
| Industry | Computer software ERP |
| Products | IFS Applications |
| Revenue | $288 million USD (2005) |
| Employees | 2,600 (2005) |
| Website | www.ifsworld.com |
Contents |
History
IFS AB was founded in 1983 to develop software that would manage business systems for the nuclear power industry. They produce components for product lifecycle management and enterprise resource planning for the mid-sized market, focusing on the manufacturing, technology and utility sectors. Their solutions are based on open standards to allow integration with other products.
- 1983 - Foundation of IFS, Linköping, Sweden
- 1985 - First Software-Release: IFS Maintenance
- 1988 - IFS delivers an early version of IFS Applications for automotive
- 1990 - First release of ERP-suite IFS Applications™
- 1991 - IFS expands to Norway and Finland
- 1992 - IFS opens its 1st office outside Scandinavia in Poland
- 1993 - Introduction of the 1st GUI for Windows. Expansion to Denmark and Malaysia
- 1994 - Object-oriented technology enters IFS Applications™
- 1995 - Expansion to North America, Japan and Indonesia - IFS Applications™ is now component-based with a graphical user interface
- 1996 - Listing on Swedish stock exchange
- 1997 - IFS establishes a software development center in Sri Lanka and expands to Great Britain, Germany, France, Brazil and Turkey. Launch of IFS Web client
- 1998 - First offices in Hungary and Argentina
- 1999 - IFS buys the US company EMS and expands to Greece - IFS is represented on all continents.
- 2000 - Introduction of Java-based internet portals and mobile solutions. Expansion to Czech and Slovak.
- 2001 - Expansion to China, Hong Kong und Russia
- 2002 - IFS and IBM begin to develop the "next generation of mobile Business Applications". All components are available as web services
- 2004 - NEC invests into IFS by buying 7.7% of IFS' share capital
- 2005 - >500 000 users of IFS Applications™
Board of Directors
- Alastair Sorbie, President and CEO
- Håkan Gyrulf, Chief Financial Officer
- Thomas Petersson, Senior Vice President, Products R&D
- Cindy Jaudon, Area Manager, North America
- Fredrik vom Hofe, Vice President, Marketing & Industry Solutions
- Manni Svensson, Investor & Public Relations
Numbers and facts
- Customers: worldwide over 2.600 with about 528.000 IFS Applications users
- Branches: IFS has 79 branches in 44 countries
- Employees: about 2.500 employess
- Research and Development center is situated in Sri Lanka. Most of the support for existing versions and the development work for future projects are done here.
Specific solutions for different industry sectors
Extensions and adaptions for different industry sectors normally are driven by requirements of customers.
- Aerospace & Defense
- Automotive
- Construction, Service & Facility Management
- High Tech
- Industrial Manufacturing
- Process Industries
- Utilities & Telecom
IFS Applications
IFS Applications is a fully integrated solution for enterprises and has over 60 different components. IFS Applications™ offers international support by default. Some benefits of IFS Applications™ 7
- Over 60 individual purchasable business components
- One global release
- Online-Documentation
- Web-based Portal
- Scalable — from one to thousands of users
- Collaboration-Portal for users, customers and subcontractors
- 20 languages supported
- Used in over 60 countries
The 7th generation of the component-based software IFS Applications ™ 7 — is completely based on the open Service Oriented Component Architecture (SOCA). It supports the complete management of product and service life cycle management from product development to different kinds of manufacturing processes and support of maintenance / service processes
Technology and architecture
Many extensions of the actual version have been developed customer-driven. IFS plans its software-architecture as evolutionary insomuch the investments in running installations of customers remain secure. Through the use of open APIs (Application Program(ming) Interface) IFS Applications ™ are integratable with other solutions and Open Source Products. Business logic is separated from the system core module and standard solutions (e.g. reports and barcode applications) are preferred instead of proprietary solutions. IFS Foundation1 strategic for the component based system, so IFS Applications™ 7 supports J2EE- und .Net as IBM WebSphere 6, Oracle AS 10g and JBoss 4.0 (the IFS Extended Server normally runs on it). Due to the support of Java Portal Standard (JSR-168), companies can access data and functions of IFS Applications ™ directly from the IBM WebSphere Portal. The platform is based on open standards like UML, SQL, XML, J2EE and .NET and ships with tools for development, use, configuration, integration and administration of the system.
