I've always had a thing for NetSuite. A bit of a crush in a way. But what I was attracted to was their functionality and how they did things a little differently than the norm. They loved transactions and order management. Not the run-of-the-mill suiteheart. They had the kind of enterprise functionality from front to back, from supply chain to demand chain to channel management to die for. Rivaled only by SAP and Oracle. As the subjects of my crushes often did, they underestimated their attractiveness and were always measuring themselves against some other beauty. For example, they saw themselves as the self-styled "SAP of OnDemand" or the "SAP of the Midmarket" - one or the other. I forget which. It was an odd characterization since I never find it a good thing as a strategy to make it seem like there is someone with a superior market position, be the underdog, but from a functional standpoint, it wasn't really too bad a description. That's one of the reasons that my crush stayed light. They have great people at the company, one of whom, Mei Li, won a Greenie last week. Zach Nelson, their CEO, sits on our Board of Advisors at Rutgers CRM Research Center and is very well liked and respected across the industry. He also has some real raconteur's panache (loves good wine and great food and sadly, he loves the Oakland As). But what kept my crush small, though it continued, was simple. They had no sex appeal. They were solid. Their stuff was functionally the best in the industry with version 10.0. But hey, what about the hot stuff, the stuff that was all curves and lines and smooth. The stuff that the 30ish and 40ish customer base wanted, but didn't get so we, er, they, had to turn their fantasies toward Jennifer Love Hewitt or Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie or Colin Farrell. NetSuite was someone to think about and like a lot, but maybe just a little crush or a best friend.
Sad, so sad, because they had so much to offer, but little to dream about
Well, all that's changed with the release of Version 11.0. They've not only added sex appeal and lots of it (still, Angelina, J Love H. Sigh.), but they have done something that can be treated, dare I say it, as a disruptive innovation. Something that has both industry wide ramifications and potentially big ramifications for customers.
What is it, you ask? What could possibly divert my attention from a Hollywood hottie to an ondemand suite? Actually, nothing could do that.
But the level of heat and appeal of NetSuite to the marketplace just rose about 110 degrees Farenheit. But before I get into the meat of this thing, I'll continue to tittilate and tantalize you for a little bit more, you randy S.O.B.s.
The NetSuite 11.0 Launch Event: We're Going To PAR-TAY!!
If there's one thing about NetSuite that's ALWAYS been hot, its been their ability to throw a party. They know how to do it. Their clients have a lot of trendy street cred, like Jon & Kira's Jubilee Chocolates, written up in magazines across the country as one of the best chocolatiers. My Flat in London, one of hottest casual accessories companies in Europe where bright green beach bags will run you $400.00 U.S. just to get in the door. They have a strong relationship with the Oakland A's (no WAY are they getting a link) which is too bad but at least understandable given their San Mateo CA roots. Hey, Billy Beane was at the launch. I heard a rumor about....well, never mind.
As far as throwing the parties, leave it up to Mei Li, their VP of PR and Zach. They know wine and they know how to provide it by the gallon. I mean they know-how-to-throw-a-party. And for the launch of 11.0, they did just that. A press dinner which I was invited to (as was my bud, uberanalyst Denis Pombriant) at Le Colonial- a wonderful Vietnamese restaurant where about 40 press showed up and took advantage of a limo to and from The Clift (a GREAT hotel in San Francisco, where we out of towners were put up - best bed I ever slept on at a hotel) and an open bar to drink very, very well. Not me that much beyond a Makers Mark Manhattan. The red wine of the evening was a Ridge Zinfandel. A gift of a bottle of 2003 Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon went away with everyone. NetSuite knows their wine, bigtime.
But that was only the beginning.
The launch was at the East Side Club at McAfee Stadium which combined the launch and a party and the A's - Yankees game into one BIG event. Two of the three things surrounding the actual demo of the NetSuite 11.0 product/services were sorta lame really - the game because the Yankees lost 9-4 (actually it was fun, though my guys sucked royally that night - pitching stunk and hitting, beyond homers by Matsui and Sheffield, was non-existent) and the "themed cartoon" called "Suite Wars." The cartoons themselves had a Southparky set of characters that had a "Star Wars" "Evil Empire" vs. "Forces of Good" them - of course, no one has ever done THAT before. The whole cartoon, with the requisite Darkside voices was a snarky some-might-think-funny-but-I-sure-didn't poke at who else, Microsoft with Darth Vader Gates and salesforce.com with the Mini-Me version of Darth Vader Benioff and SAP with I guess Darth Vador McDermott but more like Darth Vader SAP....Person, or something. It had the requisite cartoon star ships and puerile pokes at the other vendors, ad nauseum. I think you all know what I think of that kind of stuff. This one unfortunately, didn't even have the side benefit of being satiric.
But enough on that, because what they released as NetSuite 11.0 was AWESOME - and enough to overcome the lame cartoon easily.
The NetSuite 11.0 Launch Event: They DID It and I'm Just SO Glad
My thinking on NetSuite 11.0's impact:
Let's get open, cause a commotion (ooh oh)
We're still going, eight in the morning
There's no stopping, we keep it popping (oh)
Hot rocking, everyone's talking
(First to tell me what song this came from gets a $10.00 gift certificate from Amazon.com)
Of course, you're wondering what's getting me so excited, aren't you?
AJAX is No Longer Just a Mythological Hero
NetSuite 11.0 has embedded AJAX not only in the user interface for the suite but deep into the functionality of the suite and this is a wonderful thing and milestone event for the ondemand world. That means that not are you getting pulldown and drop down menus at the interface level via the web but drag and drop functionality reporting, graphing, scheduling and even on the personalization of dashboards. THINK ABOUT THIS. Every single page of every single NetSuite application that is in 11.0 has something akin to a desktop's easy to use capability. Before I re-emphasize this, I'm going to make a point. NetSuite now has added sex to the marriage of the back and front offices.
AND I'm going to take a few seconds for an educational aside.AJAX Is Part of Your Experience
The Technology
As an FYI, AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML hence the acronym - utilitarian and yet, not without some charm, if an acronym sounding like a bathroom and sink cleanser has charm.
Technically, what's going on is that multiple programming tools, like JavaScript, Dynamic HTML, XML, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS - no, not CSS: Miami), and several others of that ilk are combined to allow content on web pages to update immediately, rather than wait for a new page to load. It handles the request as a discrete request, rather than an update of a complete page. So the user sees the content change in real time. This happens because an AJAX engine runs in the background all the time to handle the requests and the page changes, rather than just loading and reloading the pages as the changes are made. It is an agnostic process using all the programming tools mentioned above without prejudice. If you want to see it in action in a freely downloaded form, check out Google Earth and zoom in and out of the planets neighborhoods in real time and you'll see AJAX in action. What makes this so damned cool is that because there is no latency issue (meaning, time delay from when you hit a hyperlink to when you get what you hit the hyperlink for). refreshing the page over time becomes an artifact of an era long gone (all of twenty minutes) and the page operates just like your desktop. (For a good quick primer on AJAX, go here.
The Experience
Okay, this is going to be the part that's the hardest to drop. Imagine this. Drag and drop so you can reformat reports or rearrange elements on a page. Or a pulldown menu with a series of choices to choose from and when you do - it will take you to where it is located or to the function you need. Popup menus that do the same thing.
Bet you're thinkin' "Big f--ing deal. I can do that already. I've been able to do that FOREVER, dweebface." Yeah, maybe, but not on the web. If you can do that on the web. Then try to use a pulldown menu on this page or try to drag and drop the blogroll on the right or whatever. You can't. Nope. Because this isn't an AJAX enabled interface nor is any of the functionality AJAX enabled. THAT means that this particular blog behaves like a website that you're used to behaves. Find something? Hit a hyperllink, search from the find menu in the browser or scroll your butts off. Not with NetSuite 11.0. All that you could do on the desktop with no wait time, you can now do with a SaaS suite - the first ondemand suite to do this - and another nail in the onpremise coffin - though don't declare it entirely dead yet. But this enhances the users experience artfully because they can function anywhere anytime from any browser environment as if it were native to whatever desktop they happen to be working on. Omniscient. Omnipresent and just very, very sexy.
NetSuite's Take on AJAX
Where NetSuite truly differentiated itself from any other SaaS company was how deeply integrated AJAX is into the functionality of the applications suite - whether back office, front office or transactional/operational functions. So you can find AJAX capabilities built into the group scheduler, the document management features (with expand and collapse - again ON THE WEB), list editing as a live function, not a separate mode; portlet use for dashboards that can be added and then collapsed and expanded as needed; and in reporting where both the fields and features can be dragged and dropped among other things. This is groundbreaking stuff - whether or not you have it on the desktop. Now you have it on the web and the entire web becomes an editable, user friendly collaborative tool and a foundation for true integration among the CRM, ERP, SCM and ecommerce capabilities that NetSuite has always had.
The Rest of the Deal
There are other parts to this, which I think were very important, but not as hot as the AJAX stuff, though SuiteScript is almost as important.
SuiteScript
NetSuite places a good deal of emphasis on this part of the 11.0 release, seeing it as perhaps even more significant than AJAX. What SuiteScript is is a Javascript based business process customization tool. I know how much that means to you. Makes me weepy too.
Actually, there is a huge value in having something that allows you to customize the processes that are endemic to your business even if the platform is on demand. While I know NetSuite claims to be the first, and technically, that's a legit claim, salesforce.com's sforce has some development capabilities that allow for customized business processes. What makes SuiteScript exceptionally valuable is that it is part of the available toolset for a suite with already has easily the best functionality and features in the enterprise ondemand world. When it gets a graphical visual drag and drop user interface it will be very, very powerful. For now, think of it as a much easier to handle version of PeopleTools. This is a first take at a true workflow tool for the ondemand world and it can build complex roles, responsibilities, triggers, actions. For this, it should be seen as very important, though not as important in my less than humble eyes as the AJAX enablement.
The Vertical Lines
NetSuite is also actually using their own tools a.k.a. "yummy, our brand of dogfood tastes better than kibbles and bytes (get it?)." They announced several new vertical versions of their suite with the most eminent one being the Wholesale/Distribution edition - the first of any kind, with the exception of perhaps SAP, for this industry. They also jumped on the services industry bandwagon and issued an edition for that - which goes well with their software industry edition released a few weeks ago. These are unusual places to start for the most part and I'm glad that they're starting there. They could own these niches that no one else is in very much. Though services is pretty hotly contested at the moment.
What made the Wholesale/Distribution edition truly interesting is that they grabbed the input of over 1000 existing customers in that space. That is an astounding number of customers to involve in the production of a vertical and frankly, refreshingly, goes against the grain of the vendors who typically presume for the customer in a far more arrogant way. This is a great way to create a vertical application suite and clearly something that other companies should replicate - though I don't know if NetSuite wants to them to
The Strategy....Hmmmm
Denis Pombriant in his excellent April 6 CRM Buyer article on the 11.0 release said, "For the time being, NetSuite says it is content to work in the mid-market, but you have to look at the company as another disruptive innovation rising from the grass roots and aiming at larger markets." I couldn't agree more. While NetSuite is certainly exceptionally strong in the upper reaches of the midmarket, they are oddly enough scalable enough to handle a larger market company but choose not to fight in that arena. They must be afraid of Yankee Stadium, too. Big crowds there all the time. (Take that!) Unlike the A's who are trying the "hot ticket" midmarket approach to fill their 36,000 seat stadium. I guess.
That, of course, was a major aside. However, I do find their strategy curious and hope that they don't shut down their push into small business or even the big ticket businesses with this remarkable new release of theirs.
With 11.0, NetSuite not only knows how to party, they also figured out how to produce the future as it should be.
Paul,
I didn't figure you for a Christina Aguilera (featuring Redman) fan???
:)
-- Mark
Posted by: Mark | April 10, 2006 at 10:00 PM