On July 28th Oracle announced plans to acquire NetSuite for $9.3 billion in cash.  This didn’t come as a complete surprise as Larry Ellison, Oracle’s chairman, is the single largest shareholder of NetSuite and Oracle is aggressively trying to increase their cloud-based revenue.  For NetSuite, a merger, in theory, could make sense for a company that has never made a GAAP profit in any quarter or year in its existence, and according to their last 10-k filing “may not achieve profitability in the future“.

For companies looking to move their ERP out of a legacy system, NetSuite would certainly be on the list of packages to evaluate.  As an Acumatica partner it is our believe that Acumatica was already a better option for several reasons:

1. Unlimited users with Acumatica vs. Priced per User with NetSuite
2. SaaS and on-premise options with Acumatica vs only a SaaS option with NetSuite (in their data center under their control)
3. With Acumatica you can upgrade on your own schedule vs. forced upgrades with NetSuite
4. NetSuite’s performance issues and system responsiveness fluctuations especially during heave usage hours in the afternoon.
5. The costs of getting your data from NetSuite in case you want to change ERP packages.

While I could continue with additional reasons to consider Acumatica BEFORE the NetSuite acquisition announcements, here are some additional things to consider as NetSuite goes through difficult process of getting acquired:

1. Oracle has made its share of acquisitions over the years, but not all of them have gone well.  Does anyone remember how the PeopleSoft merger went?  NetSuite prospects should seek out PeopleSoft users to see how their experience was a decade ago.
2. There is a strong likelihood of governance issues with potential lawsuits dragging out the timeline for the acquisition to be completed.
3. What does this do to the NetSuite channel?  How worried is your local NetSuite partner about Oracle taking over the channel?  Are Oracle sales people going to be trained to sell NetSuite solutions?  Or would they try to upsell NetSuite customers to an Oracle product?
4. Where is Oracle going to spend their R&D dollars?  They are still investing in its legacy products such as EBS, JD Edwards and PeopleSoft.  Now with five competing products how will Oracle organize them?  Individual product teams?  Or one sales person to represent all products?
5. How will the change in culture affect NetSuite?  Will the pace of development slow when under Oracle?  Will NetSuite’s core culture change to match Oracle and what impact would that have turnover?  How much could NetSuite pricing strategies change over the course of the next couple years as NetSuite is absorbed.

Making a change in an ERP package is hard enough – the acquisition of NetSuite by Oracle would likely complicate any NetSuite implementation.  Acumatica already had several advantages vis-a-vis NetSuite, when evaluating your next ERP package Acumatica should be at the top of the list.