Connecting the Clouds: Netsuite anounces connectivity to Salesforce.com

Last week Netsuite announced a series of partner applications built to integrate Netsuite’s and Salesforce.com’s platforms, enabling the integration of Netsuite’s ERP and eCommerce suite with Salesforce.com’s CRM applications. The solutions from Netsuite Developer Network partners Boomi, Cast Iron, Celigo and Pervasive are built on the new Netsuite SuiteCloud platform and are called collectively SuiteCloud Connect. The announcement follows closely on the heels of the launch of the platform itself on March 19th.

I found the announcement interesting for a couple of reasons. First this is a great competitive move to reach out to the Salesforce.com customer base with an opportunity to have a fully integrated and complete ERP, eCommerce and CRM suite that is completely SaaS or Cloud based. Since Salesforce.com does not sell an ERP or eCommerce Suite, Netsuite’s move makes them complimentary to Salesforce.com’s CRM offering. Netsuite does offer a CRM module but has chosen to “peacefully” co-exist with the Salesforce.com customer base, who are quite loyal to the Salesforce.com applications. In many ways this is reminiscent of Oracle’s “surround” strategy that has been employed for several years against SAP. Many of Oracle’s products are complimentary to SAP’s and offer vertical or other functionality that SAP does not offer. Oracle’s database is by far the most common database deployed for SAP implementations for example. The strategy has worked effectively for Oracle, will it be as successful for Netsuite?

The second observation on this announcement is that this move is just the start of what I believe will be an ever increasing number of cloud integration offerings from all SaaS and on premise vendors. SaaS is mainstream and as such will need to be integrated into businesses’ existing suites of applications both in the cloud AND on premise. In the past integration was perceived as a stumbling block for SaaS adoption but over time vendors have rolled out platforms to enable integration and customers have learned that it is not only possible but no more difficult than any integration project. The increasing interest and use by ISV’s of both Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform and Netsuite’s SuiteCloud will enable more and more out of the box integrations between the major vendor application offerings as well as enabling custom integration and custom solution development.