 From New York, it's theCUBE. Covering Inforum 2016, brought to you by Inforum. Now, here's your host, Dave Vellante. Welcome back, D. Raj Shah is here. He's the president of AVAP, an Inforum partner. We're going to talk a little bit about partnerships, the ecosystem. D. Raj, welcome to theCUBE. Well, thank you very much, I really appreciate it. So, AVAP, tell us about AVAP. You made a big bet on Infor a while back. We did. Talk about the company. Absolutely, so AVAP's a professional services organization. We're a system integrator, largest system integrator for Infor, serving over 250 customers. But it started as a single individual 10 years ago, and there's two parts to our story. The first part really was between 2006 and 2011, where we started growing and we were looking for identity, and we had multiple businesses. You know, we had Oracle staffing, Lawson, we had a micro-strategy business, and then in December 2011, I still remember listening Charles speak, because Infor had just acquired Lawson, and I had the opportunity to listen to their vision. And there were two things that resonated. One was vertical focus, because the industry really is cluttered with a lot of enterprise software providers that do the one-size-fits-all. And the second was software that is beautiful. You know, we live in the iPhone world. That became obvious in the year 2000. And here we are, 15 years later, there's still forms-based software that dominates the industry. So we made the bet in December that we're going to shut down all the other business, and we're going to focus just on Infor. And that's translated for us significantly well, making us one of the largest system integrator and exhibitor here in Infor today. You know, it's interesting. Usually when you hear a company say, we're going vertical, you think niche. You think small-tam, hard, hard-to-scale. Somehow this company has figured out a model to, you know, right? Because every software company in the world is going out there building platforms, horizontal, publish an API, get a developer, you know, a community going. Infor has taken a different approach. You're saying that appealed to you. What gave you confidence that actually the market was going to be big enough and it was going to allow you to sustain your business? You know, it really started with Charles, you know, his brand and his pedigree of what he'd accomplished. He was the architect at Oracle prior to that, what he did at Morgan Stanley, and then his career in the military. So it really was his vision and having a leader like that. That's what was missing in our ecosystem in Lawson. And then the leadership beyond that, Duncan, Pam, Stefan, and all the sales leader vertically focused that came in. So they not only talk, but they actually put action behind it. You know, as you probably heard every speaker say, they put in like close to $2 billion in software investments. That's a significant amount of money to put in. So talk a little bit about what's going on here at Inforum with AVAP, you got, you know, announcements, customers, what's the word? A lot of things going on. You know, there is, this is, we're a Go Sponsor. We just celebrated our 10 year anniversary. So in celebration of that, we had a party yesterday for our customers where we had 400 people. The excitement is unparalleled. We have 20 sessions, but the thing to note is we have nine of those sessions with customers where customers are talking about their experiences going into the cloud, how they're taking into the vertical strategy, how they're excited about the next release of financials. So that's where we're really focused. So talk a little bit more about your strategy as an SI because I always joke, the big SIs like to eat at the trough. They look for the big ERP three year projects, right? And so then you have Inforum saying, we're doing all that last mile hard work, right? And we're going to the cloud. So you don't have to worry about infrastructure. Just get it from Amazon, for example. So again, so when you see that, it's a different model than the traditional SI model. You erased it. We did, and I think, thank goodness that they're that big and they think that way because none of them are here. And it gave us the opportunity moving from a small five by 10 booth into one of the biggest spaces here on the floor. So I think that will happen. It's a progression of time. It's been played out in every ERP. You look at Workday or you look at other companies. None of the big SI's moved into it because they want to see the vendor come past that first mile. And that's what everybody's waiting on. And that's where you'll see consolidation happen. And we're betting that that will happen in the next years. And the big guys are going to come in and say, we're going to try to buy you. It's going to happen. You've seen it in other ecosystems. I don't know if you follow the ServiceNow ecosystem. It's similar, right? You just saw CSC and Accenture make big investments. A couple of companies that were there and saw the future and went ahead and built up a really sizable 400 people at your event last night. That's significant. It was a significant event. And one of the other announcements that we just made was we brought in, this is to indicate what Infor is doing and the name that's broadening, right? We went through a growth capital partner that we just brought in. We announced that at the end of May. And a company named New Mainstream Capital, highly reputable, great success track record in the market. And we didn't do that for any other reason, but to bring maturity and to help us increase that growth rate that we're going through. And there are beliefs when they came in and say that we want you to continue this. We believe in Infor. That told us that there is a buzz happening. But that's the first market that hears it. And then you're going to start getting into the secondary, which is a system integrator is a larger strategic. Well, you know, four or five years ago it was like, who's this company? Yeah. You know, the third largest. We get that today. So four or five years from now we'll be sitting and AVAP will be on the other side. And then year and a half ago in New Orleans it was like, wow, they do that? Yeah. That's pretty interesting. And now today you're seeing a real momentum. And energy and a lot of the investments starting to pay off. Now you have a strong business in healthcare. That is correct. So our business started in healthcare because of the loss and background. So today it's about 65% of our revenue, but it's increased dramatically from where it was because there was very point solutions that were ERP. And now it's moved into some clinical data bridges, serving workforce management. So several new bolt-ons that allow us to holistically service our customer base. The customer population is also increasingly changing. So one of the largest project we have going on is at the second largest health system in the country where we're doing integration and consolidation of 208 of their hospital supply chain facility. And they selected INFO as their software partner and AVAP as their system integrator over billion dollar corporations because they saw the partnership that we enjoy with INFO and the investments that we're making in healthcare. Well, the healthcare industry is just going to talk about huge transformations with electronic medical records and meaningful health and just the injection of technology into that business. Talk about a business that's being transformed. It absolutely is and a lot of it was driven by meaningful use zero, meaningful use one and we continue to see that trend and that's where the product investments, healthcare traditionally always had the stigma of being technology laggards, right? Multiple system, green screen, that's what you think. You still go to the doctor's office, you get a big piece of paper and you're hand scribbling every time that you go there. That's changing. That's really changing based on the investments. Cloud, take cloud as an example. INFO beat every other vendor and every other industry by taking over 50% of their new sales in healthcare into the cloud. That's a staggering fact that the market would never bet on, right? So that's kind of the innovations that are driving it. Oh, cloud, danger, security, blah, blah, blah, but there's no question that cloud is another unstoppable force. What about retail? We're hearing a lot this week about retail, INFO is making big investments, new business unit. What's your play there? You know, absolutely. I mean, that's one of our latest tie up with INFO and I'm personally very excited about retail and a couple of reasons there. One, because in other industries, so we have a large healthcare, our second largest business is our manufacturing and distribution. About a third of our business comes from manufacturing distribution. But all those industries are point solutions and INFO has inherited a lot of the software in those industries. Retail, they're building it, they're transforming. They're taking advantage of big data, mobile analytics and cloud to come up with rewriting software, as you heard Duncan say, after 20 years, the retail's going to get a new software facelift. So that's exciting to us because this is completely changing the game. And we've brought on board very experienced leader to lead our retail team and we're going in, we're starting in predictix as one of the examples. Starmount as another example. A massive industry, we all know and love Amazon and understand well the impact it has had on the retail business. But I mean, we've been saying for a while, now you're going to see the Amazon war room start to take effect, these retail companies that have a presence, that have a physical presence, start using that as a competitive advantage. One of the barriers has been technology and the usability of that technology and that's starting to change. Yeah, it absolutely is. And over a period of time, you see this cycle. So in retail, we're at that cycle, the 20 year cycle and that's going to be a great thing for Infor that nobody else can even play catch up to and we're excited about that. Right, D Raj, we have to leave it there but I'll give you the last word on your organization, your relationship with Infor, Inforum 2016, whatever you like. You know, the question I get asked the most is, you know, D Raj, what is a secret sauce? You know, the experience, the growth that we've explored is phenomenal, right? Ink Magazine, five years in a row, fastest growing company, Infor's only partner of the year that was voted partner of the year four years in a row. But the one that gives me a tremendous amount of pride, every night when I go to bed is the best places to work. So we've been voted the best places to work three years in a row. We have a tremendous culture and the biggest thing I feel a blessing to me is you have the ability to work with some incredible people. People that are very motivated, hardworking and believe in what Charles was talking just half an hour ago about changing the world and having happy customers. And that's really what AVAP is about. Awesome, D. Raj Shah, thanks very much for coming on theCUBE. Congratulations on all your success. It's a pleasure, thanks a lot. I appreciate it. Okay, keep it right there, buddy. We'll be back to wrap, at Inforum 2016, right after this. I'm the Chief Financial Officer.