NetSuite pioneered cloud computing. But what comes next?

When NetSuite first began offering access to its business accounting software through a web browser in 1998, most people hadn’t yet heard the term “cloud computing.”

Nor were they familiar with the word “broadband.” “We had to tailor our software for people that were using modems,” recalls Evan Goldberg, founder and EVP of what’s now Oracle NetSuite. But even after 25 years and a slew of technological changes later, Netsuite—often called the first cloud company—remains relevant, if often unheralded.

The company, known back then as NetLedger, quickly honed in on the benefits of remote computing. Goldberg, who had previously worked at Oracle and gotten to know founder Larry Ellison, says Ellison advised him from the start that companies don’t like the trouble of having to manage software.

“I thought it showed a lot of self-awareness as a database provider that people didn’t actually want to manage databases, manage computers, and operating systems,” Goldberg says.

And, it turned out, geographically distributed companies also didn’t like the fact that accounting tools of that era (when software was still commonly purchased in a computer or office supply store) was typically bound to the machine in which it was installed, meaning only one person could easily access company books. Even the PTA at the Goldbergs’ kids’ school was forced to maintain disjointed accounting files, with one person’s computer tracking donations and another tracking operations.

Early advertisements for the software highlighted features now almost taken for granted in business applications: It could be accessed by multiple users anywhere in the world, even while on a business trip, and the software was regularly updated and data automatically backed up. The company also emphasized that it was backed by Oracle’s database software—it developed custom code to cleanly isolate one customer’s data from another before Oracle rolled out its own technology for that—and by an investment from Ellison, who was already quite well known in the tech industry.

Still, in the early days, some potential customers were wary of moving data away from their own machines. “I’d be like, ‘Yeah, but I saw your server, it’s in a closet with your office supplies, and there’s a coffee stain on the computer,’” says Goldberg.

Over time, the company expanded from accounting to other small business services, including enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, and e-commerce tools. (In 2003, it changed its name from NetLedger to NetSuite.) Customers appreciated that the software’s various components all worked in sync—something NetSuite has worked to maintain as it adds features, along with dashboards where users can quickly glimpse various metrics. “As we move forward with our capabilities, we’ve always been very, very focused on and cognizant of the need for the different parts of the system to work together,” Goldberg says.

Over the years, as cloud software became ubiquitous and familiar to users, the model became more naturally appealing. “It changed from having to convince customers why they wanted to have their data on the web,” says Goldberg. “It sort of flipped, and all our competitors that were offering the old model of on-premise software had to convince their customers why not to [switch to cloud].”

NetSuite was bought by Oracle in 2016 and today has more than 36,000 customers. Just operating in the cloud alone is no longer enough to differentiate the company, now that that’s more or less the norm for much business software. But Goldberg says the wide range of functionality, and the close integration between the parts, still sets it apart from competitors. Companies can replace a variety of loosely connected apps used by different teams with, simply, NetSuite. “One system, which doesn’t just save you money on the cost of the software, but also saves you all that time and resources you were putting in to make everything work together,” says Goldberg.

Meanwhile, the product itself continues to evolve: The company has just announced new enterprise performance management tools, along with improved analytics and data warehousing features. It’s also rolling out new AI capabilities to help customers generate text (like letters to customers) and analyze and visualize their data. Goldberg says that’s likely just the beginning as AI grows more powerful and can increasingly work simultaneously with multiple facets of NetSuite. That can let it make predictions and recommendations for one part of a company based on what’s happening elsewhere, like suggesting shifts in production to align with a new sales campaign, he says.

“With NetSuite, the system knows everything that’s going on everywhere else,” Goldberg says.

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