General Position on New Technologies--Building for Change

The world of business is constantly changing.
So is the world of technology and computer software.
IFS’ philosophy is very simple—
the winners are those who successfully manage change.

Building for change is a design and engineering challenge. Over the years, IFS has identified a number of best practices to meet this challenge:

1. IFS invests time in, and carefully plans, the evolution of its architecture to build on existing investments and create a robust design that can accommodate future change.
2. IFS takes the time to encapsulate and isolate architecture layers and platform components that might subsequently become subject to change.
3. IFS supports both leading brand and open-source products so that companies are free to change the environment in which IFS Applications runs.
4. IFS embraces commodities. Rather than continue to develop its own proprietary functionality, IFS uses third-party standard solutions whenever possible. This reduces legacy and prevents the company from getting stuck with overwhelming maintenance.

IFS’ strategy of building for change applies also to standards.
As new standards appear, IFS updates its architecture accordingly. XML, Java EE™, .Net, and web services were little known five years ago. Today they are all industry standards and integral parts of IFS Applications.