NetSuite Introduces SuiteCloud

SAN MATEO, Calif. – March 19, 2009 – NetSuite has announced the release of its new SuiteCloud Ecosystem, a comprehensive offering of on-demand products, development tools and services designed to help customers and commercial software developers take advantage of the significant economic benefits of Cloud computing. Based on NetSuite, the world’s most widely used Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) ERP Suite, SuiteCloud enables customers to run their core business operations in the Cloud, and software developers to target new markets quickly with newly created mission-critical business applications built on top of mature and proven business processes.

SuiteCloud includes SuiteCloud Developer Network (SDN), a developer program for Independent Software Developers (ISVs), and SuiteApp.com, a single-source online marketplace where ISVs, customers and solution providers can find applications to meet specific business-process or industry-specific needs. For more information on SuiteCloud, please visit www.netsuite.com/developers.

As the on-demand SaaS application model has gained rapid adoption with customers and the industry as a whole, the emergence of Cloud-based development platforms, or Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), have emerged to enable third-party ISVs (Independent Software Vendors) to quickly build and distribute new applications. While most of these so-called platform-as-a-service offerings provide the hardware and software infrastructure to host applications built by third-parties, the Cloud ecosystem embodied in SuiteCloud is unique in that it is built on the core NetSuite ERP / CRM / Ecommerce offering itself. The SuiteCloud environment therefore enables ISVs to effectively embed NetSuite’s core feature set into their applications, to quickly build rich end-to-end business applications, the kind of applications that can run entire businesses.

The SuiteCloud Ecosystem announced today also includes the SuiteCloud Developer Network (SDN), a comprehensive developer program that helps accelerate the development of rich business-oriented applications. In addition, SuiteApp.com, NetSuite’s new online marketplace for ISV-developed applications, or “SuiteApps,” provides a mechanism for developers to distribute – and for customers to find – these valuable third-party applications for their NetSuite deployments.

“Providers like Amazon and Google have generated much of the PaaS buzz to date, but SaaS vendors, like NetSuite, have a unique advantage in the battle for customers and partners—they have an ‘installed’ base,” said Ian Finley, a Senior Analyst for AMR. “A company that already has NetSuite ERP should put SuiteCloud on their short list for PaaS providers. SuiteCloud’s NS-BOS has a built-in integration advantage over competitors. Independent software vendors and systems integrators looking to satisfy a niche market’s ERP needs should consider joining the NetSuite Cloud. NetSuite ERP provides an application foundation that pure platform providers lack; and, most importantly, a pool of thousands of customers already committed to NetSuite.” (Source: AMR Research, “NetSuite Wants You On Their Cloud”)

SuiteCloud is the culmination of NetSuite’s years of leadership in enabling the complex customization of its SaaS-based Suite. In 2000, NetSuite created the world’s first integrated SaaS suite, and in doing so delivered the vital comprehensive ERP, CRM and Ecommerce foundation that underpins its developer platform. With rapid adoption by both customers and the developer community, this groundbreaking innovation spurred a series of firsts in extensibility – including the first SaaS application with custom database objects, the first introduction of a SaaS-platform programming language (SuiteScript), and the first fast track for ISVs to deploy commercially available applications to their customers with SuiteBundler.