Infor
Sparking healthcare innovation with NetApp and AWS
With no storage expertise, the team supporting Infor’s Cloverleaf application was able to provision and run CI/CD workflows using a fully managed AWS service that’s built on the NetApp® ONTAP® file system.
By the numbers
availability. Crucial for patient-centric healthcare workflows
cost reduction. Optimization reduces storage expenses by up to 65%
messages. Up to 70 million messages routed daily
Infor
Introduction
The world moves fast, and industries need to keep up. In a rapidly evolving landscape, Infor is leading the way, not just adapting, but pioneering change. Infor’s primary focus is not just software, it’s people—the people who use their unique, industry-focused solutions every day.
Infor’s story of transformation begins in New York City in 2002. Today, its enterprise software solutions reach over 60,000 organizations across 175 countries. The diverse industries they serve—healthcare, manufacturing, and food and beverage, to name a few—have unique challenges and requirements.
One of Infor’s flagship solutions is Cloverleaf, a high-performing healthcare data integration platform that’s designed to manage everything from clinical data exchange to compliance with standards like HL7 and FHIR. Cloverleaf handles millions of critical messages daily, seamlessly connecting clinical systems and delivering information vital to medical professionals and the patients they serve.
“Every one of our customers’ workloads is different. Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP provides the flexibility to customize each single-tenant deployment. It allows for bespoke deployments where we can adjust and scale performance vertically and horizontally.”
Jesse Evans, Principal Solution Architect, Infor
The challenge
The journey to today’s stable Cloverleaf platform was far from smooth. In migrating its clinical healthcare applications to Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS), Infor faced a daunting challenge with storage performance. Its initial cloud storage solution struggled to handle millions of small file operations, creating roadblocks for the launch of Infor’s cloud-based products.
Infor’s healthcare apps handle millions of small 1–2KB files daily, requiring fast, low-latency storage for seamless data transformation across clinical systems. However, their existing file service struggled in a multi-availability-zone (AZ) setup, causing severe latency and throttling delivery to just 5–10 million messages per day.
A key customer eagerly awaited a solution to handle 60 million messages daily. Without a resolution, delays risked jeopardizing both project timelines and the customer relationship.
Infor urgently needed scalable, low-latency storage that could handle unique workloads while maintaining healthcare compliance standards. With no storage experts on the team, the solution also needed to be intuitive and quick to implement.
Infor’s approach
The architecture team turned to NetApp, a trusted partner with extensive expertise in data storage solutions. After thorough discussions, one solution emerged as the clear choice: Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP. This native AWS offering provides a multi-AZ storage solution designed for seamless integration, enterprise-grade performance, enhanced storage efficiency, and scalable support for diverse workloads.
Infor’s integration of FSx for ONTAP with Amazon EKS and support for embedded RaimaDB and SQLite databases offered the following advantages:
- Ease of implementation: Despite lacking dedicated storage specialists, the team swiftly deployed FSx for ONTAP across its EKS architecture within a week. The service’s compatibility with Kubernetes via NetApp Trident allows seamless integration of Storage Virtual Machines (SVMs) for each cluster.
- Storage isolation for multi-tenancy: FSx for ONTAP enables the creation of independent storage nodes for each customer, allowing robust data isolation and simplifying compliance.
- Superior performance at scale: The low-latency, multi-AZ architecture addresses the inefficiencies of other file services, effortlessly handling file operations at higher volumes.
- Built-in compliance features: FSx for ONTAP adheres to stringent healthcare industry standards, including HIPAA and SOC 2 compliance, as well as the HITRUST framework. Its NetApp SnapLock® and Snapshot™ features enable data immutability and rapid recovery—essential for healthcare workloads.
“The decision was made within a week—there was no question FSx for ONTAP would work for our use case. We provisioned it quickly, integrated it with our CI/CD pipeline, and never had to worry about storage again.”
Jesse Evans, Principal Solution Architect, Infor
The business impact
Infor’s collaboration with NetApp delivered significant advantages to healthcare customers. Here’s how they reaped the benefits:
Enhanced scalability and performance
The FSx for ONTAP system effortlessly meets customer requirements for 60 million daily messages with low latency, allowing Infor and its customers to focus on more strategic goals.
Cost savings
Deduplication and compression features reduce storage expenses by up to 65%.[1] Capacity pool tiering offers further savings by automatically moving infrequently accessed data to a lower-cost storage tier, minimizing the need for premium SSD storage.
Improved data management
The ability to manage isolated storage nodes gave customers more flexibility and tailored performance.
Accelerated cloud readiness
With FSx for ONTAP integrated into the pipeline, Infor’s containerized offerings and iterative updates go live without delay. The success serves as a template for deploying FSx for ONTAP across more products in the company’s portfolio.
Renewed confidence
The architect team expresses high satisfaction. Rather than being concerned with data persistence and storage, they’re focused on business priorities.
Key benefits
Multi-AZ deployments
Infor gains 24/7 availability with synchronous replication across AWS availability zones.
Cross-region replication
The solution simplifies disaster recovery and enables an RTO and RPO within single-digit minutes.
Snapshot copies and volume restoration
Capabilities allow the team to quickly restore data to any point, meeting compliance and customer needs.
Automatic data tiering
Moving infrequently accessed data to low-cost capacity storage reduces operational expenses.
“NetApp provides us with the skill set. FSx for ONTAP works, and we never had to look back. We never had to question it. And that's the amazing thing. We did not have to keep going back and changing and fine tuning.”
Jesse Evans, Principal Solution Architect, Infor
What’s next for Infor?
Today, Infor is unifying business and technology in ways previously thought impossible, creating meaningful outcomes for its clients. Having modernized Cloverleaf, Infor plans to replicate the FSx for ONTAP integration across its broader product suite, exploring serverless storage alternatives to further enhance latency for emerging use cases, such as machine learning-driven healthcare analytics.
Infor exemplifies the remarkable power of human innovation. By addressing industry-specific needs, the company is not only transforming the way businesses operate but also making a meaningful impact on lives worldwide.
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