NetSuite is opening up its platform to third party software vendors to create an ecosytem of applications with add-on functionality.
Cloud Computing business management provider NetSuite has announced its new SuiteCloud ecosystem, a package of on-demand products, development tools and services which the company says is designed to help customers and software developers take advantage of the collaborative benefits of Cloud Computing. SuiteCloud includes the SuiteCloud Developer Network (SDN), a developer program for ISVs, and SuiteApp.com, an online marketplace where ISVs and customers – and their consulting partners – can find applications to meet specific business-process or market-specific needs.
Essentially, then, NetSuite is aiming to draw in new customers – and drive innovative uses of NetSuite itself – by empowering independent software vendors (ISVs), in a way that's similar to what Google, Apple and Salesforce.com have done with their own online apps stores, partner and development programmes. We are moving forward with our partners collaboratively,” said VP of international products Craig Sullivan at the London launch.
SuiteCloud enables customers to run their core business operations in the cloud, explained Sullivan, and allows software developers to target new markets quickly with apps built on top of existing business processes. These have the look and feel of NetSuite – the same basic UI, avoiding a steep learning curve for new users – but with business-specific functionality that extends the suite's main processes. That said, the working examples demonstrated seemed less vertical or sector-specific apps than strong reseller opportunities.
The NetSuite initiative, then, is in support of those important 'other parts of Cloud Computing' – platform and infrastructure as a service (PaaS/IaaS), along with software development – that are sometimes overlooked in the focus on software as a service (SaaS), which many people think is a synonym for cloud computing. For mid-market companies and the smaller enterprise in particular, this rams home the message that business suites such as NetSuite and its peers are not 'applications', as such, but expanding platforms for a variety of online business models, in much the same way as social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn are growing platforms for a variety of smaller applications, tools and usage models developed by third parties.
Bolder marketing
Indeed NetSuite, which reported 1.3 million unique log-ins in its Q4, is being uncharacteristically bold in its new message to market by saying that NetSuite is now itself a synonym for “the business cloud”. "NetSuite provides the business cloud for to our customers and partners,” said Sullivan. “This creates the industry's only business cloud of integrated apps that share a common business suite platform and core set of processes, providing the opportunity to build those business apps on top of NetSuite.”
The London launch of SuiteCloud presented a more bullish and aggressive face of the company than it has shown in the recent past, with Sullivan describing SaaS tyro Salesforce.com simply as “our famous sibling” and Google and Amazon as “the infrastructure Cloud”. SAP and Oracle fared less well as “the vapour Cloud”, while Microsoft Azure was dismissed as “the cloudy Cloud”. (A pedant might point out that clouds are, by their very nature, vapour, but such is the risk of metaphors in online business...)
While knocking Microsoft and the other majors of client/server lore, NetSuite has, of course, also taken to aping the terminology of the previous generation. Its 'NS-BOS' infrastructure platform and business OS underpins the company's SuiteApps solutions directory, which together allow users, developers and their partners to “build once and inject into multiple environments" with Sullivan saying that the strategy is to be “the dominant midmarket enterprise suite” and to “connect ISVs to a huge business opportunity”.
Along for the ride
Among the ISVs signed up are Five9, Celigo, SuccessFactors, AWhere, OnSite, OZ Development, Postcode Anywhere, Nolan Computers Plc, Online One, ePayroll, Adaptive Planning, Rootstock, Daston Corporation, Pervasive, InsideView, Nulogy, Marketo, BlueBridge One and Integrisign. Each ISV will use the SuiteCloud offering to produce its own add-ons to the basic NetSuite offering.
For example, Postcode Anywhere, a UK-based company best known for its market-leading “what’s your postcode” technology, has used to quickly complete an address when buying online. used SuiteCloud to develop an add-on to NetSuite that provides business lookup automation for businesses in need of advanced address management.
“The great thing about an online solution like NetSuite is its ability to grow ever stronger through the addition of extra tools developed by specialists like us,” said Guy Mucklow, CEO at Postcode Anywhere. “NetSuite has made it easy for us to develop our integration with them, which includes both international address management and Dun and Bradstreet business information. Ultimately this saves the end user a staggering amount of hours they would have spent in developing a similar program themselves."
Chris Middleton
