NetSuite rolls out OneWorld suite; Eyes ERP in the cloud

NetSuite on Thursday officially launched OneWorld, a cloud computing ERP, CRM and e-commerce suite designed for small and midmarket companies and divisions within large corporations.

The SaaS provider says OneWorld is for multinational companies looking to connect their operations across the globe. According to NetSuite the biggest change with OneWorld is that it operates off of one database instance.

Dan Farber talked to NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson, who noted that OneWorld solves the hairball problem in enterprise applications.

"OneWorld enables our customers to run their global businesses in real time with the click of the button," Nelson said during the launch event in San Francisco. It solves the "hairball" problem, he explained. Companies with global businesses don't have to cobble together data from different vendors and applications to get a consolidated P&L or sales forecast across countries or subsidiaries.

In a statement NetSuite said:

This re-architecture is the biggest product enhancement since the introduction of NetSuite itself, to provide the product's signature capability to deliver deep and locally/nationally appropriate functionality (currency, taxation, language, reporting, dashboards, etc.) while providing for instantaneous global roll-up, visibility and compliance management.

Like NetSuite's other offerings OneWorld is delivered via a browser. NetSuite's argument is that a cloud computing approach is the best way to roll-up operational data for global companies relative to SAP or Microsoft Dynamics GP. OneWorld is delivered as an add-on to NetSuite for $1,999 a month. Thus far, 30 companies are using OneWorld and NetSuite says it has another 50 in the process of moving to the new service.

Is that $1,999 price tag too expensive?

Nelson told Dan:

"Our pricing is cheap if you look at the number of services we are replacing. It would cost $100 million to solve the multinational and multi-subsidiary management and consolidation issue if you implemented SAP on a global scale," Nelson said. "We see companies trading out their existing ERP systems to get this feature. Switching ERP systems is a big deal, but the price point and functionality is compelling."

Separately, NetSuite cited a handful of reference customers including Six Apart, Kana, Virgin Money Australia and Domin-8 Enterprise Solutions.