With NetSuite’s IPO buzz at a fever pitch, I just read in a recent San Jose article where NetSuite expects to increase its initial public shares from $16 to $19, which is up from its earlier estimate of $13 to $16 a share. At the higher price it could mean NetSuite could potentially raise upwards of $100m in the IPO. With shares heading north, what does the market tell us about our increasing comfort with not just NetSuite but SaaS? I think is says that SaaS is gaining true acceptance as a viable option for companies to run their business on, from lead to cash, and man, it's time to put your money where your mouth is. It was interesting when SaaS companies offered human resource functions, or customer service, or sales force automation. But NetSuite offers the most difficult SaaS product yet - the entire suite fully integrated. Sure, we heard and read about the promise of SaaS delivering big box features and scalability, without the high annual license fees, maintenance fees, and upgrade costs of the traditional on premise solutions, and of course without the cost of human resources to maintain it. But with NetSuite's IPO we now have evidence in the most difficult software can be delivered on-demand and meet all of these promises. The advantages for SMEs using SaaS is quite compelling. Total cost of ownership - check; reliability - check; security - check; support - check.... and the checks go on and on. And what's more, NetSuite, focused primarily on the SME market could be headed to the club house at the top of the SME leader board in the not so distant future. Personally, I view NetSuite as the company Oracle wishes it was. NetSuite is blessed with great technology and management genes, and is poised to move from adolesence to your adulthood, ready to make significant waves in the market, and potentially further blurr the line between SME and Enterprise systems. When I was an employee of Oracle, around 2000 to 2004, a shift in business strategy began to take place. They were trying to figure out if Oracle could be transformed to an On-Demand model. I don't think it really happened like the leaders envisioned. But I think that vision beats strongly with NetSuite and by some accounts, the market does too. Tom Nguyen |
