News

NetSuite Abandoning AWS for Microsoft Cloud

• By David Ramel
• 05/07/2015

NetSuite Inc. is moving its enterprise resource planning (ERP) software from Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) to the Microsoft Azure cloud.

The news comes despite AWS reporting strong financial numbers recently that show the cloud service dwarfs it competitors. It also consistently demonstrates its cloud supremacy in various surveys and studies.

However, Azure is often identified as the No. 1 competitor to AWS in the public cloud space in those various studies, and the NetSuite switch is a big customer win for the Redmond software giant.

Just how big is evidenced by the personal involvement of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in the deal.

NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson detailed how Nadella opened doors to facilitate the agreement, and the Microsoft CEO even appeared via video feed when Nelson announced the switch to Azure during a NetSuite conference on Tuesday, according to various reports. And that's despite Nadella being busy jetting across the country to attend recent Microsoft conferences in San Francisco and Chicago.

"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," Nelson said in a statement Tuesday. "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."

Specifically, the partnership will connect NetSuite's cloud ERP offering to Microsoft Office 365 and the Azure cloud. That will entail integration between NetSuite and Azure Active Directory that simplifies sign-on.

NetSuite will also be integrated with other Microsoft technologies, such Excel, Power BI for Office 365 and other Office 365 products.

The companies will work to develop a single interface with which users can access both technologies.

"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 the capabilities of Azure for testing and for developers, independent software vendors (ISVs) and customers," the company said in a statement.

Furthermore, the company said, the move will help "to build new software applications and integrations that leverage NetSuite's cloud business management suite and the powerful storage and compute 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 IT cost reduction."

NetSuite -- founded in 1998 and today reporting more than 24,000 company and subsidiary customers -- had been working with AWS for more than five years.