NetSuite CEO: businesses won't last five years without embracing cloud
Zach Nelson also announced launch of its first AI product at SuiteConnect event in London
NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson told partners he believes cloud will be the last computing platform at the vendor's SuiteConnect event in London. He added that companies who don't build their business models around cloud are unlikely to make it past the next five years.
He said: "Cloud is the last computing platform. We have gone from the mainframe era, the PC era, and now we are in the cloud era, which really straddles both of those worlds. That is over twenty years' worth of disruptions. This is the last disruption. What is there after all of your data is available on any device, anytime, anywhere? The people who win this battle will win for a hundred years, not twenty.
"This is the platform you have to leverage to be the winner in your industry. If you are not building your own business model on the cloud you are probably going to be a five-year company not a 100-year company."
The California-based vendor was founded in 1998 and Nelson claims that it was "the first cloud company". In the financial quarter ending June 30 2016 the vendor saw revenues of over £230m, a 30 per cent increase year on year.
During the keynote Nelson announced that the ERP vendor is branching into artificial intelligence with its Intelligent Order Management product. The product will augment customer information to make business processes more in touch with the specific user's needs.
He explained: "Order management is the heart of NetSuite. Our first foray into AI is around how the order is processed, how it is reordered and restocked. What we are working on is making business processes intelligent; being able to do more automation within your business processes without you having to touch it. The machine understands the most efficient way to deliver products to the customers."
Reseller E-Litt have been a partner with NetSuite since 2014, having started as a consultant for the vendor in 2012. She said she agrees with Nelson that cloud is "defnitely the future" of the industry.
She said: "We do everything in the cloud. Not only running our businesses but privately. We use the cloud for everything now. I cannot imagine companies going back to servers. I think cloud is definitely the future.
"I don't know if it will last centuries, maybe they will come up with something new. There are still companies and countries that are less open to the cloud, but the moment will come when they suddenly understand it. It is definitely going to last."