What is NetSuite? Well, in order to really appreciate what NetSuite is, we need to step back and take a look at a new direction technology has taken (especially in the business sector) in the past, oh, four or five years, give or take.
The internet has been an increasingly integral part of life, both business and personal, since it gripped people back in the mid nineties. However, for a long time, the technologies for developing on the web were limited, and what advanced frameworks were available were impenetrably obtuse to work with. With the advent of new levels of dynamism thanks to things like AJAX and HTML5, however, bringing the power and interactivity of software-styled development to browsers, this changed drastically. SaaS quickly became a phenomenon. Cloud sourced, browser-based business solutions for analytics, data management and document handling quickly became viable alternatives to traditional software models.
With the independence of architecture and operating system that browser solutions provide, it opened up so many niche software types that were never before practical to develop or market. So, what is NetSuite?
NetSuite is the epitome of this explosion of niche solutions. Today, they’re one of the biggest names in SaaS, thought hey ascended this ivory tower quietly.
Summarily, NetSuite describes themselves as a provider of multi-faceted ERP solutions. However, while that works for a general description, it doesn’t really do them justice. NetSuite actually provides pretty much every kind of SaaS solution businesses need. This includes BI, competitive intelligence, CRM, customer service solutions, and everything in between.
While individually, they seldom see the number one position in lists of solutions for any of those categories, that doesn’t mean much. NetSuite is a package deal, designed for businesses who are either in growth, or are already sizeable and in need of a plethora of solutions. As such, their approach is to provide a singular, unified framework for all of these solutions, while being atomic enough to pick and choose which parts are needed, and add more later.
Other SaaS designers tend to choose specific solutions, and develop them as far as possible, such as Salesforce in CRM, or Moodle in LMS. NetSuite produces a number of solutions with a little less specificity, with a single, core platform supporting them, and handling interchange and integration between them.
The advantage of NetSuite is that, like I just said, all the solutions they produce integrate pretty flawlessly into a kind of “super SaaS” package. The problem, though, is that it’s not as easy to make it play nice with third party stuff for solutions they don’t offer. However, if you’re going in knowing you need a multitude of solutions, and you already see where interchange between them is going to be a must, then NetSuite is a good direction to go.
The only caveat I can give you is, NetSuite’s software is fantastic, but migrating to other things later, should you choose to, is notoriously laborious to do from this position.
What is NetSuite? NetSuite is the inclusive multi-purpose take on SaaS, not unlike the traditional office suites were in the old traditional days.