IFS said it intends to develop additional IFS Touch Apps, a series of smartphone applications that extend the capabilities of IFS Applications, using the Windows Azure platform. IFS Touch Apps allow users of the IFS Applications suite to access the enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform and other tools through smartphones. Microsoft Corp. technology will run behind IFS Touch Apps to enable a connection to the IFS Cloud, a set of services running inside the Windows Azure cloud environment. IFS customers will be able to "uplink" their IFS Applications installations to IFS Cloud. The platform enables automatic updates of the apps and cloud services. IFS also announced its intent to offer IFS Touch Apps for the Windows Phone 7, giving customers to option of choosing to run the first IFS Touch Apps on Windows Phone 7, iPhone or Android smartphones.
