“So you’re going to build your business on software that was designed before the Internet existed?” demanded Zach Nelson, CEO of NetSuite in London this week. “Your company is in the Cloud. I am more convinced than ever that we are on track and you should run not walk to the Cloud.”
To that end, NetSuite has expanded its offering on the iPhone and iPod Touch, claming to be the first ERP Cloud offering on those platforms. Capabilities include:
- NetSuite Dashboards including KPIs, report snapshots, trend graphs, scorecards, reminders, and recent records.
- NetSuite Calendar with support for accepting or declining events and marking tasks complete.
- Lead, Prospect & Customer records tailored to mobile sales, field service and executive leadership, including access to associated contacts, marketing campaigns, opportunities, quotes, orders, purchase history, financial history, cases, and issues.
- Productivity tools that leverage native capabilities of the device, such as click-to-call from any NetSuite record containing a phone number, click-to-email from any NetSuite record containing an e-mail address, and click-to-map (via Google Maps) from any NetSuite record containing a physical address.
Nelson's pitch was supported by analyst Robin Bloor of Bloor Research who proclaimed that the day of the corporate data centre is drawing to a close. “It’s over, it’s just over. The corporate data centre will never compete with what is on offer in the Cloud,” he argued. "The fundamental problem with corporate computing is complexity. As soon as you start to add complexity you go into a curve and in IT, it leads you into cost. Data centres are suffering from scalability as everything they add is disproportionately costly. Corporate data centres don’t scale up beyond a certain point but cloud data centres do. They take the complexity away.”
With SAP's rival Business ByDesign offering gearing up, NetSuite has also upped its marketing push with a new incentive scheme, the NetSuite Crossroads Initiative. This targets SAP customers facing “end-of-life scenarios” with their SAP R/3 software. NetSuite is offering an enhanced version of its Business ByNetSuite programme which offers SAP R/3 customers a total migration package in year one of their subscription, including all licence fees, implementation and support, equal to customers’ annual maintenance cost with SAP. As long as they remain with NetSuite, the program provides customers with a fixed 50% off NetSuite’s then-current list price for an annual subscription.
Nelson concluded: “Now is actually the time to invest in new systems. Even though the economy is slow now is the time to get your house in order so when things recover you don’t have to worry about upgrading in the middle of a busy time.”
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