Oracle promises NetSuite performance gains at SuiteWorld
NetSuite customers will get a lot of the same tech that Oracle customers on other platforms are getting. This includes Oracle Autonomous Database and its Oracle Cloud Infrastructure service.
Oracle will keep NetSuite as an independent cloud platform but is moving it to infrastructure technologies rolling out in its other products. Oracle is upgrading the cloud-based ERP platform to its autonomous database and IaaS services. It described these plans and many others at the SuiteWorld conference this week.
Oracle is making its latest technology available to NetSuite. This includes its Oracle Autonomous Database, which automates tasks such as updating, tuning, patching and configuring resources. The database will run on top of the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), something else NetSuite is getting. NetSuite officials at SuiteWorld said these changes will improve platform performance.
These were some of the broader improvements announced at SuiteWorld. The firm also announced a long list of new features and performance measuring tools. Oracle paid $9.3 billion to acquire NetSuite in 2016.
A key point made by Oracle CEO Mark Hurd at SuiteWorld is that NetSuite will remain its own platform.
NetSuite will go on forever
"I wanted to make sure that there's no confusion whatsoever," Hurd said onstage at the Las Vegas conference. "I expect NetSuite to go on forever."
Hurd said Oracle's plans for NetSuite include support for more industries and increasing R&D.
There was no single standout announcement at SuiteWorld, but it did offer insights into how NetSuite will fully utilize Oracle's technology. For example, an underlying SuiteWorld theme was performance, and that means taking advantage of Oracle technology, such as its multi-tenancy capabilities.
I expect NetSuite to go on forever.
Mark HurdCEO, Oracle
"Previously a peak load by one customer might impact other customers," said Gary Wiessinger, senior vice president of product management for Oracle, at SuiteWorld. The multi-tenancy capabilities isolate the loads and give more consistent performance, he said.
Furthermore, OCI enables the firm to turn on new data centers more quickly, Wiessinger said. The firm, over its 20-year history, has built six data centers. But over the next 20 months, it will turn on six new data centers to improve scalability, he said.
The OCI platform is popular with financial professionals, and many new features, such as expanded localization for rules imposed by various countries, were aimed at them.
Analytics throughout the ERP platform
NetSuite's other product goals include embedding analytics everywhere in the suite. This includes embedded analytics in dashboards, forms and pages generally, according to Wiessinger.
NetSuite has also been working on AI-related upgrades. This includes "uncovering unexpected correlations and predicting what's going to happen next and recommending what you should do about it," Wiessinger said. That capability will underpin budget supply chain and customer segmentation analysis.
In other announcements, NetSuite emphasized improvements that make it easier to manage ERP resources globally. This includes trade management and localizations for the major economies in Asia and Europe.
One new feature will automatically reimburse employees in the currency of their home country rather than the currency of corporate headquarters.
