SYDNEY, Feb. 18, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- NetSuite Inc. ( NYSE: N), the industry's leading provider of cloud-based financials / ERP software suites, today announced that UXC Limited, the largest Australian-owned ICT services and solutions firm, has joined the NetSuite Solution Provider Program to meet the growing demand for cloud solutions. UXC will deliver NetSuite's range of cloud-based business management software solutions, enabling customers to run their core business processes such as ERP, CRM, financials, eCommerce, professional services automation and more, while reducing IT hardware demands and providing anywhere anytime access for remote users. This partnership enables UXC to jump to the head of the cloud-based software market with the #1 Cloud ERP software suite.

ASX-listed UXC provides ICT solutions in consulting, business applications and infrastructure services to medium and large entities in the private and public sectors across Australia and New Zealand. It chose to partner with NetSuite due to its complete range of cloud-based business management solutions and to capitalise on the growing market demand for cloud offerings. NetSuite delivers the business benefits that UXC's clients are looking for: advanced functionality, reduced operational IT costs and risks, rapid deployment, speed and the agility to launch new business operations and subsidiaries quickly, as well as a faster time to market than on-premise software solutions.

"This partnership leverages our existing business management experience with NetSuite's leading cloud platform, to offer the market a true cloud business management offering – it is all part of our strategic direction in providing innovative, industry-leading solutions to help our customers grow more effectively," said Cris Nicolli , managing director of UXC. "Partnering with NetSuite expands the UXC Cloud Solutions business unit considerably within our applications segment alongside UXC Eclipse, UXC Oxygen and UXC Red Rock."

"As the market for cloud business management solutions continues to grow within Australia and New Zealand, we are constantly looking for new partners that offer extensive industry and vertical expertise," said Mark Troselj, NetSuite's Managing Director for APAC. "UXC's experience in ERP solutions, services and consulting, places it in a unique position to offer local businesses a completely integrated cloud business suite that enables new levels of efficiency and growth."

About NetSuite Solution Provider Program
Launched in 2002, the NetSuite Solution Provider Program is the industry's first cloud channel partner program and unites hundreds of channel partners and their cloud opportunities with industry-leading margins and incentives (NetSuite SP 100) to grow their businesses. Designed to help solution providers transform their business model to fully capitalise on the revenue growth opportunity of the NetSuite cloud, the NetSuite Solution Provider Program delivers unprecedented services that begin during recruitment and range from business planning, sales, marketing and PS enablement, to training and education. For more information about the program, visit http://www.netsuite.com.au/portal/au/partners/solutionprogram/main.shtml.

About UXC
UXC Limited is an ASX listed Australian business solutions company, and the largest Australian owned ICT consultancy firm. UXC services medium to large entities in the private and public sectors across Australia and New Zealand. UXC provides ICT Solutions in Consulting, Business Applications and Infrastructure that support our customers to design, implement & enhance, and operate & manage their ICT requirements. UXC strives to be the leading Australasian IT Services and Solutions Company, delivering value, innovation and responsive business outcomes with excellent people.

For more information about NetSuite please visit www.netsuite.com.au.

Follow @NetSuiteAPAC on Twitter for NetSuite news and real-time updates.

NOTE: NetSuite and the NetSuite logo are service marks of NetSuite Inc.

PR Newswire (http://s.tt/1zVOj)

SAN MATEO, Calif., Jan. 28, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- NetSuite Inc. ( NYSE: N), the industry's leading provider of cloud-based financials / ERP software suites, today announced new customer wins among fast growing companies outgrowing standalone Intuit QuickBooks accounting software for the greater functionality, efficiency and capacity for business growth available through NetSuite's integrated cloud business management software suite. Upgrading to NetSuite has spared these companies from having to manually re-key data between QuickBooks and separate application silos for CRM, inventory and order management, eCommerce, and other core business processes. They have gained process automation, and real-time visibility into critical business metrics not possible with QuickBooks and business solutions, and report stronger business growth by eliminating the ceiling imposed by QuickBooks business accounting software.

Executives of former QuickBooks users SOLiD, CIRCA and Accelerated Claims will share their insight into why they upgraded to NetSuite and the benefits they have derived during a webinar on Wednesday, February 6, 2013, "Why Companies Are Switching from QuickBooks to the Cloud to Fuel Their Growth."  To register for the webinar click here, or to learn more about the benefits of moving from QuickBooks to NetSuite, please visit http://www.netsuite.com/portal/solutions/quickbooks.shtml.

The latest customers moving up from QuickBooks to NetSuite join thousands of other companies that have made the switch to support accelerated growth in revenue, customers, sales channels, geographic markets and more. Typically, small companies deploy QuickBooks upon starting up business operations, but once the company grows beyond a handful of employees, they face limitations in functionality, process synchronization and visibility that inhibit their growth potential. Primarily accounting software, QuickBooks requires a business to buy and integrate separate applications to run sales force management, eCommerce operations, order management, marketing and customer support. Frustrations with functionality limitations and the high costs and pain associated with integration forces QuickBooks users to look for something better to sustain their business growth. The need to manage software and servers with QuickBooks on-premise applications introduces another pain point and needless costs for IT services. By upgrading to NetSuite, customers report that they have been able to:

Improve productivity and operational efficiency. NetSuite supports an entire company—accounting, sales, fulfillment, order management, inventory, service, eCommerce and more—eliminating the need to transfer and rekey data between QuickBooks and other applications.

Enable better, faster decision-making. Real-time, anytime anywhere access to critical business information in NetSuite enables companies to seize opportunities and make better decisions with speed and precision.

Gain a platform for unlimited global growth. Used by more than 12,000 companies and subsidiaries in 100+ countries around the world, NetSuite gives QuickBooks users a breadth and depth of functionality that can help power virtually unlimited growth. NetSuite includes built-in multi-company, multi-location, multi-currency, multi-tax, and multi-language capability to support global expansion across multiple locations and subsidiaries.

Eliminate IT hassles. NetSuite's integrated cloud software eliminates software integrations and patches, upgrades, hardware maintenance and integration projects, allowing companies to focus on growing the business.

"QuickBooks can make sense for a small company just starting out, but it can't keep up as the company grows and adds new users, products, customers, markets and revenue streams," said Kishore Bhamidipati , Director, NetSuite Product Marketing. "We've seen time and again how QuickBooks defectors in numerous industries have thrived in the cloud after coming to the realization that QuickBooks wasn't the right solution to enable their next stage of growth."

Customers making the switch to NetSuite include SOLiD, CIRCA and Accelerated Claims:

SOLiD (www.solidtechusa.com), a publicly-traded global telecom solutions innovator headquartered in Winston, Oregon, tripled its annual revenue in 2012 since going live on NetSuite in October 2011 to run accounting, order and inventory management, and manufacturing orders with its South Korea-based parent. NetSuite's cloud solution enables global collaboration between the U.S. operating arm and the South Korean manufacturer on purchase orders and specifications, helping the company achieve its objective of having industry's fastest time to delivery for marquee customers within healthcare, higher education, sport venues, mass transit and other industries. The superior visibility gained with NetSuite has enabled SOLiD to reduce sales cycle response times from 2½ weeks to two hours, while dashboard metrics with drill-through to detail enables real-time monitoring of revenue, costs, customers and the sales pipeline. NetSuite CRM has provided SOLiD sales reps and engineers a real-time view of customers, prospects and orders. NetSuite's cloud access supports mobility and remote operations for the distributed company.  "With NetSuite, now we control every aspect of our business," said J.P. Headley , Corporate Controller at SOLiD. "We completed over 2,000 shipments in 2012—we never could have shipped that much gear without NetSuite."

CIRCA (www.circajewels.com), a leading international "reverse retail" buyer of fine jewelry, diamonds and watches, has gained new capacity for growth and enterprise-caliber capabilities for global financials, CRM, inventory and more since upgrading from QuickBooks to NetSuite OneWorld in mid-2012. Based in New York City, CIRCA uses NetSuite OneWorld to run subsidiaries in Asia and Europe, with multi-currency financials, global consolidation, real-time visibility and local taxation and language support, all without the manual error-prone work required with its previous solution. NetSuite also enables CIRCA to run its nine locations in large U.S. cities with one integrated solution. CIRCA has halved its monthly financial close times from two weeks on QuickBooks to seven days, while NetSuite inventory management enables the company to precisely track the location, history and status of high-value items purchased from the public for resale to jewelry dealers. NetSuite CRM gives the company a single view of public clients selling jewelry, positioning it to cultivate repeat business. With NetSuite, CIRCA has a scalable, customizable platform to sustain the exponential year-over-year growth it has achieved since the company launched in 2001. "The difference between QuickBooks and NetSuite is night and day. The reporting functionality in NetSuite is much better, and with NetSuite dashboards I can monitor the business with real-time visibility," said Gemell Davis, CIRCA Controller. "In my role, I have the opportunity to help grow the business rather than being concerned with issues in QuickBooks."

Accelerated Claims (www.accelclaims.com), which provides services to help hospitals manage motor vehicle accident claims, is taking advantage of NetSuite's richly customizable scripting capabilities to more effectively manage data in different healthcare- and insurance-specific file formats gathered from nearly 20 client hospitals in the U.S. Southeast, while streamlining transactions with those hospitals. By replacing standalone QuickBooks and Sage ACT CRM applications with NetSuite's integrated solution, Accelerated Claims, based in Kennesaw, Georgia, has a unified view of its business that has improved efficiency across the board by eliminating the manual data entry previously required. Compared to QuickBooks, NetSuite financials has given Accelerated Claims greater visibility and depth of reporting, helping the company to reduce invoicing cycles from three days to several hours, while supporting rapid growth for the company ranked #1,643 on the 2012 Inc. 5000 list. Accelerated Claims managers and in-hospital patient counselors use NetSuite CRM to manage patient information, benefiting from ease of use, a fast learning curve and web-based access that company officials say is far superior to Sage ACT. "We really needed something to help us scale the business in the future that could tie together financials with customer information, and we found it with NetSuite," said Phil Wofford , Accelerated Claims CFO. "Our efficiency has definitely increased, and we have much better flexibility for reporting and report customization. We're able to better service the different requirements of our client hospitals."

Follow NetSuite's Cloud blog, NetSuite's Facebook page and @NetSuite Twitter handle for real-time updates.

For more information about NetSuite, please visit www.netsuite.com.

NOTE: NetSuite and the NetSuite logo are service marks of NetSuite Inc. Third-party trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners. The use of the word partner does not imply a partnership relationship between NetSuite and any other company.

PR Newswire (http://s.tt/1z2sr)

Local governments in China are scrambling to develop cloud computing parks, yet efforts are being stymied by poor planning, misplaced capital and inefficient infrastructure.

Chairman of China Broadband Capital Edward Tian says initially there was little interest in developing the sector, but enthusiasm has exploded and the place of development has given rise to a number of problems.

According to a report by the China Cloud Computing Technology and Industry Alliance released Jan. 21, some 30 local governments have unveiled plans to develop cloud computing in their jurisdictions, which included providing incentives related to land, tax and funds.

One serious problem, according to An Hui, a director at the China Center for Information Industry Development, is the lack of applications and services in cloud computing, as the industry is still only in its infancy.

Local governments have been slow in pushing their plans and few have delivered tangible results, An said.

One of the reasons behind the lack of progress is that governments have given little thought to market needs and how they are going to generate profit from such projects.

Thoughtless pursuit of cloud computing by local governments, which fail to provide the much needed services, has resulted in these becoming dud investments, An said.

Tian also drew attention to the need for a national plan for cloud computing, which might provide guidelines for the construction of large data centers, the deployment of energy and other strategies.

Figures show that a cloud computing data center with 1 million servers runs up 5 billion yuan (US$803 million) in energy costs a year, potentially a heavy financial burden on local governments.

Furthermore, according to a 2010 report by Accenture, a consulting firm, the government needs to establish standards governing safety, data protection and technology is cloud computing is to have wide application.

There are organizations at home and abroad pushing for standardization in cloud computing, yet conflicting standards have confused local enterprises as well as users, according to An.

Tian also called for better broadband services from local internet operators for cloud computing to develop. The broadband services available in China still lag those in developed countries by a large margin, Tian said.

Tian's view was echoed by the Accenture report, which said that slower broadband speeds had impeded the development of the cloud computing sector.

Despite a wider coverage of broadband internet in China, most users' download speed is 4 megabits per second, far slower than the average 17.4 megabits per second speed in developed countries.

Story from http://english.sina.com/business/2013/0124/552988.html

SAN MATEO, Calif.—December 18, 2012—NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N), the industry's leading vendor of cloud-based financials / ERP software suites, today announced that leading commerce businesses are leveraging NetSuite SuiteCommerce to pursue their strategic 2013 New Year's resolutions of growing their bottom line through greater business efficiency and an enhanced user shopping experience. EnergyFirst, Leland Fly Fishing, Jafrum International and KASK America have joined the growing list of companies exceeding their resolutions with NetSuite SuiteCommerce's web storefront, order management, marketing, inventory management, financials, and customer support. In doing so, these organizations have benefitted from lower operational costs, while delivering the exceptional customer experiences that build customer loyalty.

Providing quality specialty products to a broad audience has always required highly-efficient business operations and a special focus on the customer experience to reach and serve new customers. Unfortunately, first-generation commerce systems present numerous limitations and complexities that undermine these efforts, including the inability of eCommerce point-solutions and legacy back-end systems to easily integrate and cost-effectively scale. Worse, such systems often limit visibility into lifetime value by producing multiple fragmented data sets on customers, inventory and financials. As a result, organizations lack the visibility into their own operations to identify and address inefficiencies, and, even more concerning, the knowledge of individual customers required to appropriately engage with them.

"The complexity facing merchants is growing on multiple fronts. It's virtually impossible to address all of them with the spaghetti IT architectures of yesteryear," said Andy Lloyd, General Manager of Commerce, NetSuite. "NetSuite SuiteCommerce unleashes the power of the cloud to ratchet up business efficiency and delight the omnichannel customer through a uniquely-personalized experience. Having positioned themselves to achieve their own business resolutions, these companies can focus on the needs of their customers."

Based on the NetSuite "Commerce as a Service" (CaaS) architecture, SuiteCommerce provides a suite of fully-integrated, cloud-based commerce capabilities that address these issues and deliver critical business advantages:

Single customer view. Provides a single, 360-degree view of customer orders, preferences, issues, contact and payment information and more to ensure retailers can deliver rewarding interactions online, on the phone, in a store or anywhere else.

Dynamic web store. Enables customers to easily find the product they want; strategically presents products to increase engagement; offers customized incentives for each individual customer; makes checkout a painless experience; allows customers to experience it all through the device of their choice (i.e. smartphone, laptop, tablet, etc.).

Order management. Ensures quick and efficient processing of all orders through a flexible order processing workflow; provides the ability to set approval rules; automatically selects delivery from specific warehouses based on inventory availability and geographic proximity.

Multi-location inventory management. Maintains tight control over inventory through complete visibility and management at all locations; customer visibility into inventory availability at any commerce site; demand planning and forecasting on sales and inventory levels based on historical or manual data.

Customer support. Provides customer support capabilities such as case workflow management, order monitoring (status of an order, etc.) and robust customer self-service capabilities for common queries and changes.

Multisite management. Manages multiple sites easily through a single instance, through website setup and management capabilities, including rules to manage which sections of product catalogs should be shared across sites.

Native integration with back-end business systems. Natively interoperates with NetSuite's comprehensive solutions for CRM, financials, inventory and order management, marketing and more to allow businesses to increase their online sales while dramatically improving productivity and efficiencies.

By providing these capabilities in a single suite, SuiteCommerce allows organizations to interact and transact with customers anywhere, through multiple devices, recognize and reward shoppers, use collected data to better run their businesses, and do it all through a single, integrated commerce system based in the cloud. NetSuite SuiteCommerce has enabled EnergyFirst, Leland Fly Fishing, Jafrum International and KASK America to sidestep common technical challenges and focus on growing their businesses.

Shares of San Mateo, California-based NetSuite jumped 15 percent to $65.40 at the close in New York, the highest since the stock began trading in 2007. The stock has increased 61 percent this year.

Enlarge image

Zach Nelson, chief executive officer of NetSuite Inc., stands for a photograph after a Bloomberg West television interview in San Francisco. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

NetSuite is working to expand its customer base in the crowded market for online business applications against companies including Salesforce.com Inc. (CRM), SAP AG (SAP), Microsoft Corp. and Oracle. NetSuite yesterday raised its full-year sales forecast to a range of $306.3 million to $306.8 million, from a prior projection of $300 million to $305 million. Analysts on average had projected 2012 revenue of $304 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“As some traditional enterprise software companies struggled, NetSuite again exceeded our stated outlook and delivered record revenue and non-GAAP EPS,” Chief Executive Officer Zach Nelson said in a statement yesterday.

Full-year earnings excluding some items will be 23 cents to 24 cents a share, higher than a previous range of 19 cents to 21 cents. The average analyst estimate was 23 cents.

Third-quarter sales rose 31 percent to $79.8 million, helped by a 60 percent increase in the number of deals worth more than $200,000 as more mid-size companies added NetSuite products.

The net loss in the quarter widened to $8 million, or 11 cents a share, from $6.9 million, or 10 cents, a year earlier. Profit excluding some items was 8 cents a share, beating analysts’ estimate by 2 cents.

Story from http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-10-26/netsuite-rises-to-record-as-client-adds-boost-forecast.html

CEO, NetSuite

Nelson has his eyes on the prize: $1 billion in annual revenue. Thanks to a hot niche -- business software delivered via the Internet -- he may achieve his goal. (Revenue for the last four quarters rose 28% to $288 million.) Investors are bullish: Shares of NetSuite (N) are up some 56% this year. --SNM

NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson spoke with IDG News Service this week on a wide range of topics. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation.

[ Get the skinny on the state of the cloud with InfoWorld's "Cloud Computing Deep Dive" special report. Download it today! | Stay up on the cloud with InfoWorld's Cloud Computing Report newsletter. ]

IDGNS: NetSuite is one of the longest-running players in the SaaS market. That gives you the advantage of maturity, but does it also mean that your core architecture is getting dated?

Nelson: No. The good thing about NetSuite is that we architected it correctly from the start. Multitenancy out of the gate, that was a very important decision. We chose to make it very customizable. Not all SaaS applications are customizable. We put deep customization in the first iteration of the architecture. As time has moved on and our customer profile has changed we've had to re-architect some of the subsystems to deal with application performance. Last year we introduced SuiteCommerce. That allowed us to scale up to larger retailers. That was an 18-month re-architecture. I think you'll see us do a subsystem re-architecture once every 18 months.

IDGNS: Legacy software vendors have often been criticized for letting products slide into "maintenance mode," with decreasing amounts of new features being added. Is NetSuite spending enough on research and development?

Nelson: Two years ago it was about 14 percent [of revenue]. Since then, it's come down to somewhere in the 12s. However, in that time frame we have tripled the number of developers. We do our global development on the NetSuite platform. It allows us to scale research and development while spending less.

IDGNS: You're hiring in other parts of the world, including the Czech Republic. Is the potential for lower developer salaries there another consideration?

Nelson: It's not just the lower cost of hiring developers, it's being able to find them. Hiring in the Bay Area for developers is a very arduous process. You have to start looking in other locations. However, in the United States we have a new development center in progress. We still do a lot of hiring in North America.

IDGNS: NetSuite runs on the Oracle stack. Although it might be uncomfortable given that Oracle CEO Larry Ellison is an investor in NetSuite, is there any interest in moving off Oracle to other technologies?

Nelson: No. It's definitely not on anyone's priority list. Oracle is the database of record for most SaaS systems for a reason.

IDGNS: How do you handle deals where you're competing with Oracle, given your deep relationship?

Nelson: We don't really avoid competing directly. If the customer wants to put us and SAP side by side, us and Oracle side by side, we're going to compete and try to win the deal. I think there's a natural separation in our strategies, so we don't collide that much.

IDGNS: Oracle likes to talk about what a big advantage its new Fusion Applications have, since the same codebase can run in the cloud or on-premises. NetSuite is all about the cloud, though. Does Oracle have an edge over you with Fusion?

Nelson: Oracle has a different target market than us. That decision of whether to go on-premises or off-premises may be a bigger decision point in the CIO office at those companies. They may want to hug their server. In our companies, they don't want to hug the server, they don't want to manage these applications. We're pretty religious about not putting software on-site, but I suppose some industries probably require it be on-premises. But I think the segment of the market who wants it on-premises is shrinking.

Our customers have also figured out that if the guy writing the software actually has to run it, they have to write it a lot better.

IDGNS: Is NetSuite in the market to acquire a cloud-based HCM (human capital management) vendor, like SAP did with SuccessFactors and Oracle did with Taleo?

Nelson: Historically, our customers have not been demanding HR solutions. What NetSuite has been designed to do is run business processes. Procure to cash, procure to pay. We rarely, rarely get asked for HR. I think you're seeing the evolution of three core processing clouds that are somewhat independent. One's an HR process: Finding employees, onboarding them and training them. NetSuite runs an operational process: How does data about sales move through your core transaction processing system? Finally there's the sales force cloud: How do you prospect and find new leads?

HR has certainly not been a priority [for NetSuite]. Is NetSuite interested in managing job reviews? Not really. That said, we're always looking at where the intersection points are. We already do payroll today. We'll continue to beef up HR in terms of payroll and benefits, but when it comes to talent management and job reviews, it's not as core. We'll partner there.

IDGNS: What about analytics? Will NetSuite make any acquisitions in that area?

Nelson: We have good core reporting today. One of the biggest challenges in reports is getting the data consolidated so you can visualize it. We solve the big problem, in that [customers'] data is all in one place. We're delivering real-time BI to all user types today. That said, if you look at the things we're doing in e-commerce, the massive amounts of customer data, then you might do something different. You might see some new efforts in that area of analytics.

IDGNS: You're growing quickly and beating analysts' expectations. However, your customer churn rate has been cited as a concern in the past. What is your churn rate today?

Nelson: It's never been lower in our history. We don't really give a churn number, but it can't really get any lower. The churn numbers that we saw [in the past], that was when we were in the very low end of the market. [Such customers] may go out of business 30 percent of the time, so you have 30 percent churn. The primary source of churn now is when one of our customers gets acquired.

Story from http://www.infoworld.com/d/cloud-computing/netsuite-ceo-zach-nelson-talks-growth-strategy-and-life-oracle-210517

Retail Anywhere, a 28-year-old Paso Robles, Calif., company, is a NetSuite partner that reachitected its software last year to run on NetSuite's cloud-based ERP suite. The company's in-store software runs on traditional POS hardware and on Apple iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch mobile devices. This client software is designed to queue transactions and synchronize with central retail systems so stores can keep running even if networks go down. Retail Anywhere's cloud services, which are now based on NetSuite, consolidate transactions from across multiple stores, integrate with back-end systems and support business intelligence querying and reporting.

With last year's redesign, all of these capabilities are now directly tied in with NetSuite's inventory management, storefront, order-management and customer support capabilities. The integration has solved challenges many retailers are now struggling to overcome to do business across multiple customer contact points, according to NetSuite.

"Customers want to be able to shop online and pick up merchandise in stores, and when they're at a store and something isn't in stock, they want to know if it's available nearby or can be ordered online," said Andy Lloyd, NetSuite's General Manager of Commerce Products in a phone interview with InformationWeek.

[ Want more on NetSuite? Watch the video interview NetSuite CEO: What's Next For ERP In Cloud. ]

NetSuite has other POS partners, but it was drawn closer to Retail Anywhere when it moved its centralized services onto NetSuite, Lloyd said. The partners already have more than 30 joint customers, including bike retailer Transition BMX, military garb retailer Patriot Outfitters and hair care products supplier DC Labs.

The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. The POS vendor's employees will join NetSuite's eTail/Retail Products business, and Retail Anywhere CEO, Branden Jenkins, has been named general manager of that unit. NetSuite will support Retail Anywhere products even if they're used in conjunction with rival financial, retail and ERP systems such as Microsoft Dynamics, Quickbooks and Epicor, Jenkins said.

Retail Anywhere's POS and retail-management competitors include Celerant, Micros, Retail Pro, Syncronics and Tomax. Such systems are increasingly showing up as modules of larger retail and ERP systems. Microsoft Dynamics and Epicor, for example, both have their own POS systems.

NetSuite will continue to work with third-party POS partners like Onsite, Lloyd said, but he noted that customers are increasingly demanding tightly integrated systems covering all customer touch points.

"Our customers have been happy with our e-commerce offerings, but many of them do the majority of their business through stores, so POS is crucial," Lloyd said.

Tech spending is looking up, but IT must focus more on customers and less on internal systems. Also in the all-digital Outlook 2013 issue of InformationWeek: Five painless rules for encryption. (Free registration required.)

Story from
http://www.informationweek.com/software/enterprise-applications/netsuite-acquires-retail-anywhere-for-po/240145929

While NetSuite is far from a startup, the company continues to act like one. Just a year ago, the stock price was at $39.60. Now it’s at $69.20.

So I reached out to NetSuite’s CEO, Zach Nelson, to get his take on the cloud and some of the emerging trends. Here’s what he had to say:

Q. What’s your take on 2012?

A. It was a great year for us. NetSuite’s stock was the No. 2 performer compared to our peer software companies. But we were actually No. 1 for the past three years.

There has been a big transition for NetSuite and the industry in general. In 2012, we saw very large companies move business critical processes to the cloud. It’s not just about things like salesforce automation anymore.

As for NetSuite, we are seeing two-tier ERP. This means a large company will rollout an ERP system for a fast-growing subsidiary. We did this for companies like P&G and Qualcomm.

Q. Your thoughts on the dealmaking in the cloud space?

A. A major M&A driver was that big traditional client/server vendors got caught napping. They needed to build a credible story around the cloud and this meant buying companies. But the strategy has not really solved the problem.

Going forward, there will be a changing of the guard in the business software market. Whenever there is a transition like this, the legacy players are usually not the leaders for the next generation. This is not good for companies like SAP (NYSE:SAP) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT).

The trend to the cloud is evident when you look at the revenues. You can also see this in the stock prices. People are betting with their own wallets. Even the incumbents are betting with their wallets!

Q.  What about some trends for 2013?

A.  One is commerce as a service. I see this as a big trend in 2013 and for years to come. This is why we bought Retail Anywhere. The Point-of-Sale technology combined with our SuiteCommerce platform allows customers to sell through any channel, whether it be online, mobile, or even a screen on the car. Customers want a seamless integrated experience wherever they encounter your brand, and we aim to provide technology to enable that.

I think it is a misconception that retail is dead. If you look at Apple, the main reason for the company’s success was its integrated retail model. It was a big driver.

Now traditional retailers need to find a way to take the Apple approach. The problem is that they could not do it because much of the technology had been built before the cloud era. Apple, on the other hand, built its own system.

Now with Retail Anywhere and NetSuite, retailers can have the same experience regardless of the channel.

Q.  You also think there will be an “Apple Effect” on enterprise software, too?

A.  I think Apple will become the model for the successful next-generation enterprise software company. And it will not just be because of the user interface. That’s just one piece of it.

The other is having an integrated model. Everything works together. This has actually been the vision of NetSuite since 1998. That is, we believe that the winner in enterprise software will be the company with a suite of applications that work seamlessly together. And so far, we are the only one with the technology.

Tom Taulli is the author of How to Create the Next Facebook: Seeing Your Startup Through, from Idea to IPO and High-Profit IPO Strategies.  Follow him on Twitter at @ttaulli.

Story from
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomtaulli/2013/01/10/netsuites-ceo-apple-will-change-enterprise-software/