Netsuite ‘determined’ to grow rapidly in UK

Netsuite has said it is "determined" to quickly expand its business in the UK.

 Zach Nelson, chief executive, said this week at the company’s SuiteWorld event in San Francisco that "a lot" of the company’s early focus had been on the US, but that it considered itself to have the strength and the products to grow in the UK.

 "It’s a branding problem as much as anything," said Nelson. "When we tell people what we can do, and how quickly we can do it, we hear a lot of interest."

Netsuite was also planning growth across continental Europe, and Nelson said this presented an as-yet unsolved debate with regards to the impact on its UK expansion. "Do we try to grow in France or do we, for example, triple our UK advertising budget? We have plenty of customers in the UK but it just needs to grow faster."

 The company said it saw UK business expenditure on IT as growing, overall, but only gradually.

 Paul Auffermann, UK managing director at Netsuite, explained: "We have new leads coming in the UK, but in general people are husbanding their cash."

 Asked whether IT departments were concerned over a loss of control with cloud computing, Auffermann said: "We see the IT function in the UK as progressive. Sometimes it’s a business led decision [to go to the cloud], sometimes it's an IT decision, and sometimes it’s departmental, which affects perception. Businesses are however much more supportive of cloud computing than they once were."

 Nelson said Netsuite was prepared to continue taking on the larger, established vendors in the UK. "We know we are competing against ‘free’ SAP and ‘free’ Oracle in the cloud  - but customers are smart and they know they only get those products on those terms because they are paying for the on-premise SAP or Oracle stack in the first place."