NetSuite partners with Oracle to expand in China

Fifteen years since it pioneered a cloud-computing business model for software providers, NetSuite aims to expanding its operations on the mainland through its alliance with Oracle.

Zach Nelson, the president and chief executive at NetSuite, said strategic co-operation with Oracle would help to grow the company's business in China, the world's third-biggest information technology market after the United States and Japan.

NetSuite, the leading cloud-based supplier of business-management applications, formed an alliance with industry giant Oracle and global professional services firm Deloitte last month to deliver a new software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering to medium-sized companies employing fewer than 500 people.

SaaS is a segment of the cloud-computing market in which companies and consumers buy, lease, sell or distribute a range of "on demand" software over the internet - much like the way consumers get electricity from a power grid. The software is hosted in the service provider's data centres. "Cloud" is a metaphor for the internet, which is depicted as such in computer network diagrams.

Under the terms of their alliance, Oracle's human capital management (HCM) cloud application and NetSuite's cloud enterprise resource planning (ERP) system will be integrated to create a SaaS offering for customers.

Deloitte, meanwhile, will develop a new business unit with consultants to help customers adopt the soon-to-be-integrated technologies faster.

The HCM cloud product of Oracle, the world's largest enterprise software company, provides a range of human resources-automation capabilities, from recruiting and managing talent to forecasting future workforce needs. NetSuite's cloud ERP helps manage a business's financials, sales, services and fulfilment operations.