Announcing NetSuite (News - Alert) Services Company Edition Version 2007.0, company officials pronounce the new version, the 12th generation of the NetSuite application suite, improved with "powerful project management functionality, a key requirement for the professional services industry."

 

The new capabilities, NetSuite officials say, "make it possible for consulting and professional services companies to manage the entire project lifecycle -- their clients, projects, billing and entire business operations -- without the investment in multiple systems and complex, costly integrations."

 

Designed for project-based consulting and professional services companies, NetSuite officials say the Company Edition "allows for management of the entire business cycle," including project tracking and time budgeted and spent on project tasks, backlog tracking and reporting, analyzing and optimizing employees' workloads, efficiency and availability.

 

There are also features to handle complex billing and invoicing, and estimating job profitability by comparing projected loaded labor cost against expected billings to automatically alerting project overruns, schedule delays, and variance in expected resources per project.

 

The company is billing the product as providing "even more powerful capabilities to consulting and professional services firms to manage projects with better control and more efficiency," pointing to its project revenue forecasting, cost allocation to projects, contractor self-service portal for time entry, improved project management and flexible project profitability reporting and streamlined time and expense entry.

 

This summer NetSuite filed a Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with its plan for an initial public offering of common stock, according to investment industry journal RTT.

 

Larry Ellison (News - Alert), the co-founder and CEO of Oracle, is a director of the company and owns a 74 percent stake. Evan Goldberg, also a former Oracle employee, started the company in 1998 with the help of Ellison. Goldberg is the presently the company's chairman and chief technology officer and owns an 8.1 percent stake in the company.

The company's CEO, Zach Nelson, also a former employee of Oracle (News - Alert), owns a 3.6 percent stake in the company. The company began as the small arm business of Oracle Corp. and licensed the Oracle brand as well as introduced its Oracle Small Business Suite around 2000. In 2004, NetSuite stopped the development and marketing of Oracle Small Business Suite and changed its name to NetSuite.