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Infor XA

Infor XA at a glance
VendorInfor
HeadquartersNew York, NY, USA
OwnershipInfor (Koch Industries); product acquired with MAPICS in 2005
DeploymentOn-premises on IBM i (Power Systems); partner hosting possible, no SaaS
Support statusActively maintained; Release 11.0 shipped fall 2025, published roadmap to about 2035; Release 9.2 support ends September 2026
Target marketExisting install base of discrete manufacturers on IBM i, including automotive and aerospace suppliers
IndustriesAutomotive suppliers, aerospace components, general discrete manufacturing
PricingNot published; maintenance and upgrades quoted individually
Websiteinfor.com/products/xa

What Infor XA is

Infor XA is a discrete-manufacturing ERP that runs on IBM i, the platform descended from the AS/400. Its lineage goes back to MAPICS, among the first packaged manufacturing systems ever sold, and the install base still leans heavily on US automotive and aerospace suppliers with IBM Power hardware in the building. One thing sets it apart from most software of this vintage: Infor has published a development roadmap that extends to about 2035.

The company behind it

MAPICS stood for Manufacturing Accounting and Production Information Control System. IBM created it in the late 1970s, and it became the standard manufacturing software of the AS/400 era before moving to the independent company MAPICS, Inc. Infor acquired that company in 2005 and rebranded the product as XA.

Release 10 arrived in 2021. Release 11.0 followed in fall 2025, with REST API support and Java 17 compatibility on the plan, and Infor has slated releases 11.1 through 11.3 to expand shop floor, quality, and financial functionality. The ten-year vision presented at the 2025 inPOWER user conference runs to roughly 2035.

Functional scope

The module list is the classic manufacturing stack: MRP, engineering and bills of material, shop floor control, quality, purchasing, inventory, order management, and financials. EDI carries more weight here than the module list suggests, because automotive supply relationships depend on it. Users reach the system through System i Workspace in the browser, and from Release 11 onward Infor plans to retire the older Host Presentation Server in favor of Host-Link. REST APIs and IBM i 7.6 support are targeted for 2026, which would make integration with modern cloud services considerably less painful.

Typical customers

New buyers do not shortlist XA. The market is the existing base of discrete manufacturers, many of them automotive and aerospace component suppliers, that have run IBM i for decades and value the platform's reliability. In those plants XA usually sits deep inside operations and has been customized over many years, which is exactly what makes both upgrades and exits expensive. The user community remains active, and Infor product management engages with it directly at annual conferences.

How it is sold

XA runs on-premises on IBM Power servers under IBM i. Partners can host the environment; there is no SaaS edition. Infor does not publish pricing. Existing customers pay annual maintenance, and upgrade projects to Release 10 or 11 are quoted individually, with the degree of customization driving most of the number.

Editorial verdict

Legacy in the literal sense, yet one of very few legacy products with a committed decade-long roadmap, and that changes the math for companies already running it. One item is not optional: support for Release 9.2 ends in September 2026, so anyone still on that release needs an upgrade to Release 10 or 11, or a documented exit plan. For a stable IBM i shop that values continuity over novelty, staying is a rational decision rather than inertia.

Companies rethinking their platform should price an XA upgrade against a migration to a modern system such as Infor CloudSuite Industrial Enterprise, with the full data migration effort inside the comparison instead of relegated to a footnote. And if you have no IBM i history, there is no reason to start one here.

What the Infor XA website looks like

Current view of the vendor homepage, captured by our editorial team.

Screenshot of the Infor XA vendor homepage

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Frequently asked questions

Is Infor XA end of life?

Not as a product line. Infor presented a roadmap at its 2025 user conference that extends to about 2035. What does expire is support for Release 9.2, scheduled to lapse in September 2026. Customers still on that release should plan an upgrade to Release 10 or 11, or evaluate a replacement, well before that date.

How are MAPICS and Infor XA related?

MAPICS was developed by IBM in the late 1970s and became the dominant manufacturing package on the AS/400 platform. It changed hands over the years and was operated by the independent company MAPICS, Inc. before Infor acquired it in 2005. Infor XA is the direct continuation of that code line, modernized with browser interfaces and, on the current roadmap, REST APIs.

Does Infor XA require IBM hardware?

XA runs on IBM i on Power Systems, and that dependency is structural rather than incidental. A partner can host the environment so you do not own hardware, but XA does not run on Windows or Linux servers and there is no multi-tenant SaaS edition. Leaving the IBM i platform therefore means an ERP replacement project, not an upgrade.

We are still on XA Release 9.2. What should we do?

Support ends in September 2026, which means running without vendor support shortly after. Infor recommends Release 10 as a stepping stone or a direct move to Release 11, and partners offer structured upgrade assessments. Effort scales mostly with how heavily the installation has been customized, so an early scoping exercise beats a budget guess.

What does Infor XA cost?

Infor does not publish pricing for XA, so everything is quoted individually. For existing customers the recurring figures are annual maintenance, upgrade project services, and any additional user licenses or modules. Since XA sells almost entirely into its install base, there are no public list prices to benchmark against, and quotes from Infor and its channel partners are the only reliable source.