117364 Resource 102363 102466 102466 1141163468577 1141175819885 Controlled What To Expect From NetSuite's Unseen Platform

The most important aspect of Software as a Service is felt, never seen, by the user

<p>I'll call the infrastructure NetSuite's platform, it's more seemly than 'backend'. What I'm referring to is the combination of machines, operating systems, databases, networks and data centers where NetSuite stores and manipulates the user's data. Most of this activity takes place on a farm of servers. This farm&nbsp;runs the Linux operating system and the Oracle Database in a highly redundant and highly scalable data center. </p><p>Why bring this up? Well, first of all we are asked about this by every serious prospect, and with good reason; it's important. For us, the key value proposition is that the client no longer needs to take care of this infrastructure as a NetSuite customer. It makes for an interesting sales proposition: NetSuite's applications are very good and customers buy them for what they are getting as well as what they are not getting, i.e. the infrastructure. </p><p>I also happened to read an article today by Nick Carr about the <a title="nc" href="http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/02/is_the_server_i.php">server industry and the great consolidation taking place</a>. There is an awful lot of consolidation taking place within companies and within whole computing markets. In fact Carr also mentions the Google paradigm that <a title="ps" href="http://sightlog.sightlinesconsulting.com/public/blog/115382">Paul Strassmann</a> talked about where the company just buys cheap components and builds a massively parallel machine out of, basically, mid range desktops. The secret is in the software that makes a lot of machines act as one, creating a grid as it were. </p><p>In an article about the outages at salesforce.com recently, Phil Wainewright talked at length with NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson about NetSuite's own use of grid computing that entails lots of small machines arrayed in a grid to handle the computing needs of thousands of users. <a title="zn" href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=105">More here</a>.</p><p>While large businesses are consolidating their servers and Google turns to large farms of small servers, small and medium enterprises, SMEs, are taking the opportunity to get out of the server business altogether. Many are looking at NetSuite and for good reason. One of those reasons is that the company has a very good track record with outages, having very few, and none of any significance. NetSuite wisely adopted a fail-safe approach to the architecture, much like Google's approach; lots of machines arrayed in a strong grid.</p> 9 application/xml false netsuite netsuite architecture small and medium enterprises sme software as a service The NetSuite Alternative http://blogs.zdnet.com/SAAS/?p=105 Maybe http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2006/02/is_the_server_i.php Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; T312461; YPC 3.0.1; (R1 1.5); .NET CLR 1.1.4322) 68.79.117.127 68.79.117.127 tfoydel false true false false true 205861 false false true false false false true 102363 blog blogsite/SightLines/web