NetSuite announces cloud alliance with Microsoft

NetSuite Inc., the leading provider of cloud-based financials/enterprise resource planning (ERP) and omnichannel commerce software suites, announced recently that it had formed a cloud alliance with Microsoft to create new and innovative solutions that connect NetSuite’s cloud ERP to Microsoft Office 365, Windows and Microsoft Azure, which are expected to deliver high-impact value, productivity and simplicity to mutual markets and customers.

“We’re at the ‘end of the beginning’ of the cloud, in that the cloud business model that NetSuite pioneered in 1998 is becoming the de facto standard for how fast-growth businesses are run,” NetSuite Chief Executive Officer Zach Nelson said.

“We’re thrilled to work with Microsoft to deliver a fluid cloud environment across the key NetSuite and Microsoft applications that companies and their employees rely on to continually improve their day-to-day operations and run their business better and more efficiently,” he added.

“I’m excited about NetSuite’s support for Azure Active Directory for single sign-on, cloud-to-cloud integration and increasing our collaboration across mobile and cloud solutions,” said Steve Guggenheimer, corporate vice president of developer platform and evangelism, and chief evangelist for Microsoft.

“Our joint vision is all about giving people the freedom to get more done through the broadening set of devices they interact with that in turn helps businesses innovate and grow,” he added.

The collaboration pairs NetSuite’s cloud ERP suite with Microsoft cloud technology in the short term:

• Available immediately, an integration between NetSuite and Azure Active Directory that enables single sign-on for customers using NetSuite together with that directory, eliminating the need for users to manage and use multiple passwords.

The integration also gives administrators centralized control of user-authentication and password management, while enabling organizations to strengthen role-based approaches to business management. Built using Security Assertion Markup Language 2.0, the integration reduces the security risks of user-managed passwords, while providing additional protection from phishing and other threats.

• In the coming months, NetSuite and Microsoft will start cloud-to-cloud integration between NetSuite and Office 365, providing seamless access to both technologies from within a single interface, and improving productivity and collaboration across a variety of roles, from financials to shipping, marketing, e-commerce, business analytics, retail-store associates and more.

Through this integration with Microsoft Excel, customers will be able to connect NetSuite data to Excel and Power BI for Office 365 to visualize information and discover new insights into their business. Also, NetSuite will migrate its entire employee base to Office 365, realizing significant value in alignment between the world’s leading productivity system and NetSuite’s cloud business management suite.

• By the end of 2015, NetSuite will migrate from AWS and on-premise deployments to leverage Azure as its preferred cloud-infrastructure platform and take full advantage of Azure’s capabilities for testing and for developers, independent software vendors and customers to build new software applications and integrations that leverage NetSuite’s cloud business management suite and the powerful storage and computing capabilities of Azure offering businesses the significant advantages that are becoming synonymous with world-class cloud computing—efficiency and flexibility, large productivity gains, and dramatic reduction in information-technology (IT) costs.

Today approximately 24,000 companies and subsidiaries depend on NetSuite to run complex, mission-critical business processes globally in the cloud. Since its inception, NetSuite has established itself as the leading provider of enterprise-class cloud ERP suites for divisions of large enterprises and mid-sized organizations seeking to upgrade their antiquated client/server ERP systems.

NetSuite continues its success in delivering the best cloud ERP/financial suites to businesses around the world, enabling them to lower IT costs significantly, while increasing productivity, as the global adoption of the cloud accelerates.

For more information on NetSuite, visit www.netsuite.com.