Description
NetSuite Inc. is an American cloud-based enterprise software company that provides products and services tailored for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) including accounting and financial management, customer relationship management, inventory management , human capital management, payroll, procurement, project management and e-commerce software. NetSuite was founded in 1998 with headquarters in Austin, Texas. The company is widely seen as the first cloud computing software company, with its founding pre-dating that of Salesforce.com by about a month. Oracle Corporation acquired NetSuite for approximately US$9.3 billion in November 2016. The Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit is managed by Executive Vice President Evan Goldberg as "Oracle’s Cloud ERP for Small and Mid-sized Enterprises with the ability to scale to Fortune 500 firms."
History
NetSuite can trace its beginning to a five-minute phone call between Evan Goldberg and Larry Ellison where the two discussed the idea of selling software over the internet. That conversation led Evan Goldberg to found NetLedger, NetSuite’s original name, in 1998. It offered web-hosted accounting software. The company was seeded with both start-up money from Oracle CEO Larry Ellison as well as a host of key staff previously employed at Oracle. The company’s Chairman and CTO and other management transitioned from Oracle to NetLedger. At one time the solution was licensed by Oracle, branded The Oracle Small Business Suite; however, that experience was short-lived, and the licensing deal was cancelled in 2004. Goldberg was the chairman and chief technology officer up until the Oracle acquisition.
In July 2002, Zach Nelson was appointed CEO. Prior to joining NetSuite, Nelson ran an early provider of business applications over the Internet called MyCIO.com, a division of McAfee Corp. This experience led him to the belief that all software would be delivered over the internet, and he left McAfee to join NetSuite. He led the company from about $1 million in revenue to a billion-dollar run-rate prior to its acquisition by Oracle Corp.
In September 2003, the company officially changed its name from NetLedger to NetSuite, Inc. to reflect the company’s success in expanding its offerings to a suite of business applications beyond just accounting, including ERP, CRM and e-commerce.
On January 4, 2007, NetSuite named Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane (of Moneyball fame) to its board of directors.
NetSuite became a publicly traded company after its initial public offering (IPO) of 6.2 million shares on the New York Stock Exchange in December 2007. On July 28, 2016, Oracle announced it had offered to purchase NetSuite for $9.3 billion. The deal closed in November.
NetSuite headquarters are located in Austin, Texas. NetSuite has additional offices in Denver, Colorado; Santa Monica and Redwood City, California; Chicago, Illinois; Atlanta, Georgia; New York City, New York; Boston, Massachusetts; Toronto, Canada; the United Kingdom; Spain; the Czech Republic; Hong Kong; Singapore; Australia; Brazil, and Uruguay.
