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IT Pro:
2006/3/8
US Vendor Enters Japan Declaring Arrival of the Age of ERP as Services
NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson
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One of NetSuite's Dashboards |
NetSuite, an American vendor that provides ERP and other business applications through an application service provider (ASP) model, announced on March 8 that it would start offering services in Japan from as early as April. It will establish a Japanese subsidiary by the end of March, and launch sales activities, targeting midsize companies with a workforce of about 500.
At the press announcement, NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson (photo 1) declared that the trend towards using software as a service will continue, going on to explain that "there are surveys that predict that over the next few years, the ASP market will grow to four times the size of the package software market. And one of the key pillars of the ASP market will almost certainly be ERP."
NetSuite's product by the same name is an ASP service offering not only ERP, but also e-commerce site building and CRM applications. The "Dashboard" user interfaces that run on a Web browser provide real-time snapshots of data such as status of orders or sales (photo 2). Access to functions and data can be controlled according to position or job.
Netsuite will be available on a monthly subscription basis, with fees being decided according to the number of users. Fees for Japan are still not fixed, but for the international version, standalone CRM costs $95 per person, with price rising to $135 if e-commerce functions are added. The full suite which includes ERP functions costs $600 for the first person, and $100 for every other person. All services require separate payment of deployment help and technical support costs, but Nelson says that "over the space of three years, NetSuite will cost only 50-60% the price of conventional business application packages with equivalent functions. NetSuite is a clear winner where price competitiveness is concerned."
NetSuite has appointed Takahiko Higashi, who was in charge of business application strategy at Microsoft Japan, as president of the Japanese subsidiary. NetSuite Japan will first launch an ASP service offering CRM functions from around April. Higashi says that "ERP will come on board once we've localized the functions to support Japanese accounting standards, bill settlement and such like. Because this will take a fair amount of time, ERP services probably won't be launched until around April 2007."
(Reported by Ryota Tamaki, Nikkei PC)
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