NetSuite (NYSE: N), a provider of cloud-based financials / ERP and omnichannel commerce software suites, has entered into a strategic cloud alliance with Microsoft to create new, innovative and future-proof solutions that connect NetSuite’s cloud ERP to Microsoft Office 365, Windows and Microsoft Azure.
“I’m excited about NetSuite’s support for Azure Active Directory for single sign-on, cloud-to-cloud integration and increasing our collaboration across mobile and cloud solutions,” said Steve Guggenheimer, Corporate Vice President of Developer Platform & Evangelism and Chief Evangelist for Microsoft. “Our joint vision is all about giving people the freedom to get more done through the broadening set of devices they interact with that in turn helps businesses innovate and grow.”
The collaboration pairs NetSuite’s cloud ERP suite with Microsoft cloud technology in both the near and short term.
Available immediately, an integration between NetSuite and Azure Active Directory that enables single sign-on (SSO) for customers using NetSuite together with Azure Active Directory, eliminating the need for users to manage and use multiple passwords. The integration also gives administrators centralized control of user authentication and password management while enabling organizations to strengthen role-based approaches to business management. Built using Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) 2.0, the integration would reduce the security risks of user-managed passwords while providing additional protection against phishing and other threats.- In the coming months NetSuite and Microsoft will start cloud-to-cloud integration between NetSuite and Office 365, providing seamless access to both technologies from within a single interface and improving productivity and collaboration across a variety of roles, from financials to shipping, marketing, ecommerce, business analytics, retail store associates and more. Through integration with Microsoft Excel, customers will be able to connect NetSuite data to Excel and Power BI for Office 365 to visualize information and discover new insights into their business. Additionally, NetSuite will migrate its entire employee base to Office 365.
- By the end of 2015, NetSuite will migrate from AWS and on-premise deployments to leverage Azure as its preferred cloud infrastructure platform and take full advantage of the capabilities of Azure for testing and for developers, independent software vendors (ISVs) and customers to build new software applications and integrations that leverage NetSuite’s cloud business management suite and the storage and compute capabilities of Azure.
“We’re at the ‘end of the beginning’ of the cloud, in that the cloud business model that NetSuite pioneered in 1998 is becoming the de facto standard for how fast-growth businesses are run,” said Zach Nelson, NetSuite CEO. “We’re thrilled to work with Microsoft to deliver a fluid cloud environment across the key NetSuite and Microsoft applications that companies and their employees rely on to continually improve their day-to-day operations and run their business better and more efficiently.”
At the same time, NetSuite has announced that American Express Global Business Travel (GBT) will run its entire global financial operations on NetSuite OneWorld. GBT, one of the world’s largest travel agency networks, plans to use NetSuite OneWorld to power its core end-to-end financial processes, including financial consolidation across dozens of countries and currencies around the world, as well as order-to-cash and procure-to-pay – all within a single unified software system.
