Oracle and NetSuite: A match made in heaven - but what does the future hold?

Oracle announced on July 28^th its intention to purchase NetSuite for $9.3 billion subject to regulatory approval. NetSuite is a leading cloud based ERP/CRM/eCommerce software business suite that was founded in 1998 by Evan Goldberg and has been to the forefront of financial cloud technology since its inception. But what does the future hold for both organizations and why did Oracle feel the need to purchase NetSuite?

The Cloud
Oracle has been shifting aggressively to the cloud over the past two years as its more traditional client/server based enterprise solutions have become less popular with customers. Indeed, its revenue mix has shown just how important cloud is becoming to Oracle’s future. NetSuite as a pure bred cloud company will help Oracle get a great share of the cloud driven marketplace.

SMB Marketplace
NetSuite will help Oracle strengthen its position in the ever growing small to medium marketplace, a sector that Oracle has largely ignored up to now. It hopes the NetSuite acquisition will help Oracle to reach smaller companies that can't afford Oracle's traditional high-cost, high-maintenance product.

International Reach
In NetSuite, Oracle saw a cloud company whose sales of e-commerce and manufacturing software to smaller businesses were stalling as it tried to move into international markets. Oracle will use its branding and international knowledge to help NetSuite overcome international obstacles.

Competition.
If Oracle had not purchased NetSuite, chances are that a rival such as Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce or Sage may have done so.

NetSuite Two-Tier Strategy
Oracle’s powerful databases will help NetSuite’s Two Tier Strategy of going to market, i.e. where multi-national corporations use cloud solutions such as NetSuite for their subsidiaries and international markets, but feed all the data back to the head office main ERP system such as SAP.

Will NetSuite remain as a separate entity?
Oracle’s Mark Hurd has stated that they will continue to run NetSuite as a separate company, but if the previous PeopleSoft acquisition is anything to go by, it may not be long before Oracle turns NetSuite into a complete Oracle offering which may mean price increases for existing NetSuite clients.

B2BGateway, a ‘Built for NetSuite’ solution, has been NetSuite’s EDI partner since 2001, back when they were known as NetLedger, and we wish them the very best for the future. If you would like to know more about B2BGateway’s cloud based, fully integrated EDI solutions for NetSuite users please email Sales@B2BGateway.Net or visit https://www.b2bgateway.net/edi-for-netsuite/

Dreamforce 2015: Dream or Nightmare?

I must admit, that being a Dreamforce virgin, I was quite apprehensive about attending this year’s Dreamforce show in San Francisco. To the uninitiated, Dreamforce is the annual Salesforce user and partner conference and this year over 170,000 people were registered to attend in downtown San Francisco. I have been to large shows many times before with up to 12,000-15,000 attendees, but Dreamforce is over tenfold this number. So much so that all hotels downtown were completely booked out and Salesforce had to hire a cruise ship to dock at one of the San Francisco piers for the week to provide additional accommodation to attendees.

With these kind of mind blowing numbers: How would we literally walk the floor? Is it possible to get lunch with so many people? Would the afterhours social scene, where we tend to do a lot of business, be impossible? Will it be possible to speak to anyone at their booths?

Unfortunately form the moment we signed up to attend, the signs seemed ominous – not a hotel room downtown to be had for love nor money. We ended up getting a hotel in Milbrae out by the airport. Next problem – how to get in and out of downtown from Milbrae? We hired a car but traffic on the 101 and the cost of parking was becoming a nightmare. However, once we landed and took up residency at our hotel we quickly realized that the car was superfluous to our needs and that the BART rail system would be more than adequate at a fraction of the cost of car hire and parking charges.

With the car dilemma over, things were quickly picking up. The BART system worked a dream for early morning starts and late night returns, the queues for practical functions such as registration, demonstrations and lunch were very comfortable. It was also a plus that the exhibition room floors were well laid out and extremely easy to follow with a lot of booths having their own private meeting rooms for more in-depth discussions.

At B2BGateway, due to the nature of our EDI solution which is predominantly used in Wholesale Distribution and Manufacturing markets, we found it more beneficial to meet the ERP and OMS partners that built their products on the Salesforce platform. It was wonderful to meet with such great organizations as FinancialForce.com, Rootstock, Ascent ERP, Kenandy, Sage and Accounting Seed.

Over the course of the week I must say our nightmare premonitions never came to fruition. The whole show for us was a complete dream and finishing it out with live performances by The Killers and The Foo Fighters was the icing on the cake. Here’s to Dreamforce 2016, hope to see you there!

If you would like to know more about how B2BGateway’s cloud based, fully integrated EDI solutions can work with any ERP system built on the Salesforce platform please visit www.B2BGateway.Net or email Sales@B2BGateway.Net