It occurred to me the other day that I must post on NetSuite's technical plumbing, and that the post deserves to be in the Value Proposition Chapter. NetSuite's technology is an important question for all prospects, and it also makes an important contribution to the value of the software. In fact, in some case is is the deciding factor. Let's take a look to understand why that is. First off, all modern systems have 3 tiers. There is the database server tier, the client tier and in the middle the application server tier. The server is simply a fairly high powered computer that has been configured to handle a great many requests for information, and not much else (it does not have a video card, for example). On the server we install an operating system and a database. In NetSuite's case this is the Linux operating system and the Oracle Database. On the client side there is a browser. Not much more to say here. Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.. In between the client browser and the database server there is a traffic cop - the Application Server. The app server does many things, but most importantly it helps take a lot of the pressure off the database and the browser. Need a form to enter customers or items? The app server brings it up. Need to run a report, the app server manages the relay of the data request to the database and then when it receives the data back it formats it into the report you requested. Pretty cool. The database only has to worry about managing the data. The browser only has to worry about presentation and the app server keeps everything moving along. But NetSuite is a web app, accessed over the Internet, so where does the Internet come into play? The Internet is simply a system of information highways that enable the data to travel from your client to NetSuite's servers. There are rules for travel on these roads, called protocols, or TCP IP in the Internet's case. Also, for travel over the Internet there is encryption, in NetSuite's case it is 128 bit SSL encryption, the best there is for commercial use. So there you have it, the NetSuite technology stack is Oracle on Linux, add a browser, the Internet and data encryption and you have the NetSuite system. The other important fact that you should know is that NetSuite locates the server farm at a Level 3 Comunications facility. This is a professionally managed data center with several layers of security and redundancy. Do they have one major fiber optic cable coming into the building, no they have two. Do they backup the database once? No they back it up and mirror it several times. How seriously does NetSuite take the maintenance of the system? In their Terms of Service they make the guarantee that if they miss 99.5% uptime in any month they will rebate the cost of that month to the customer. I think that's pretty good. Value proposition? I didn't forget. The value proposition is that you don't need to become an IT person or hire an IT person to run a very sophisticated IT system. This is unprecedented. There has never before been a system that could run a decent size enterprise without a group of IT people there to manage every aspect of its performance. But I've noticed it's the little things that really tickle the business owners that I talk to: - You'll never have to stay late or come in on a Saturday to apply a patch, or as they're known in polite company, a service pack
- You'll never have to hear about how a patch application blew up this or that and caused the IT guy to work 40 hours of overtime on the weekend
- You'll never have to listen to a muddled up story about some IT fiasco with the unsettling impression that you are hearing a lot of BS
- You'll never find out that the reason the invoicing program failed is that the IT staff was setting up the NCAA Final Four brackets for the whole company at the same time
- You'll never walk into your business and find a door jam busted and the server missing
- You'll never have to worry about whether the tape the office manage takes home every night actually has data on it
- You'll never wonder why the professionals always call it Backup and Recovery when all you have ever seen done is backup
- You'll never have to worry that somebody you fired still knows how to hack into the root of the system and steal or delete your data
Once customers have been down the path of managing on-premise systems they immediately understand the value of having NetSuite handle the system for them. It's the small, growing companies who are moving from off the shelf software to larger system that have a hard time imagining the really big move they are making. | 
