(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Cloud computing business management software developer NetSuite Inc. (www.netsuite.com) has announced an aggressive new channel sales program, including a 100 percent margin offer designed to enable channel businesses to meet customer demand for modern cloud-based solutions, while painlessly migrating their current business models.
According to its Tuesday announcement, the NetSuite SP100 Program incorporates NetSuite’s industry-leading cloud computing business management software suite with sales and technical training, ongoing marketing support and a limited-time offer of 100 percent margin on first-year license subscriptions. The program should have particular appeal to channel businesses struggling to reverse steadily declining revenue streams due to sagging demand for old legacy on-premise systems.
“With this new program, NetSuite takes dead aim at the partner networks established by competitors including Microsoft, Sage, and SAP, who have been irresponsibly slow to innovate new applications that take advantage of cloud economics and productivity,” NetSuite chief executive officer Zach Nelson said in a statement. “The market for cloud computing is surging, but the ERP dinosaurs have nothing to offer their loyal partners. NetSuite is here to protect their futures.”
Breaking the traditional mold of on-premise revenue sharing, the NetSuite SP100 Program gives partners the entire year-one software subscription revenue for qualified new customer transactions of 24 months or more, enabling them to quickly recoup costs of sale and jump-start their first half of the 2010 revenue. Also, partners are entitled to a 10 percent margin on all renewals, establishing a lucrative recurring revenue stream.
“NetSuite reinvigorated our business,” said Simon Whittle of IT consultancy The AIS Group (www.theaisgroup.com), a longtime Microsoft Dynamics value-added reseller and new NetSuite solution provider. “After a tough year, NetSuite has given us new drive and excitement and a really good kick in the pants. This year we expect NetSuite to account for 50 percent of our new customer wins. We are positively looking forward to this year and beyond.
The NetSuite SP100 Program includes many of the key advantages previously available to channel partners such as commissions paid on customer collections. Most NetSuite customers prepay for service anywhere from one to three years in advance, meaning the revenue split for the entire period is available to partners as soon as it is paid. As well, NetSuite remains the only top-tier cloud computing ERP suite provider that pays channel partners for customer renewals, not just new sales.
