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NetSuite Goes Down Under
[June 24, 2005]

NetSuite Goes Down Under


NetSuite announces a deal with MYOB in Australia and New Zealand.

By DAVID SIMS
TMCnet CRM Alert Columnist

NetSuite, a vendor of on-demand business management software, is announcing a partnership to distribute NetSuite to medium-sized businesses in Australia and New Zealand with MYOB, a developer of small-medium business management software.

NetSuite will be co-branded as MYOB NetSuite and will be sold to end-user companies via MYOB's extensive distribution network.

The selection of NetSuite as MYOB's mid-range solution represents a strategic move by MYOB in the mid-market with an on-demand service, analysts think, since the offering will be delivered in partnership with Net Return, NetSuite's distributor in Australia and New Zealand.



MYOB – see if you can figure out what it means – sells business management solutions primarily to small-medium businesses in Australia and New Zealand. In Australia, MYOB accounts for 67 percent of the back-office software market according to the GfKGroup.

MYOB officials said with the growing demand for Web-based services such as NetSuite, they decided to partner with an on-demand software vendor to provide its customers an alternative to self-managed applications. NetSuite is the only major application service provider to deliver its applications locally from an Australian data center, MYOB officias say, providing “more security and higher performance” for local customers.


MYOB will offer NetSuite's namesake product that integrates CRM, ERP and eCommerce. In addition, it will offer the company's NetSuite CRM+ offering for existing customers seeking an on-demand CRM product

NetSuite has more than 7,500 customers.

According to press reports, MYOB intends to strengthen its appeal to medium-sized businesses in Australia and New Zealand, taking a stake in a distributor of hosted business management systems.

MYOB is paying AU$7 million ($5.3 million U.S.) for 35 percent of NetReturn with an option to buy the rest in either 2007 or 2008, MYOB chief executive Craig Winkler said.

NetReturn is the exclusive distributor in Australia and New Zealand of NetSuite which offers a hosted business management system that provides front-office to back-office integration -- eliminating the traditional time and cost of building and maintaining IT infrastructure.

NetReturn chief executive Mason Little said the alliance was good for the company, since “we've been promoting the benefits of on-demand computing for some years now, with some success, however we just don't have the financial resources in Australia, nor the brand presence at this stage, to grow the market to take up as quickly as we would like to.”

NetReturn forecasts revenue of over AU$7 million ($5.3 million U.S.) in 2004/05 and is expected to become profitable in 2005/06.

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David Sims is contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles by David Sims, please visit:

http://www.tmcnet.com/tmcnet/columnists/columnist.aspx?id=100005&nm=David%20
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