Oracle NetSuite bullish on cloud computing in Philippines

MANILA, Philippines - At NetSuite’s first SuiteWorld conference after it was acquired by Oracle last year, the company – now officially known as Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit – said things have only become better and brighter under Oracle.

Thomas Kim, managing director of NetSuite Philippines, said the company’s Philippines business operations continue to grow.  NetSuite is still the number one cloud ERP suite  in the country today.

“With Oracle, NetSuite is going to be more, better, forever. It’s a lot better now because we are going to leverage and access the vast resources that Oracle has,” Kim told tech writers on the sidelines of the recently-concluded Oracle-NetSuite conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In conjuction with NetSuite’s global announcement of  expansion plans, Kim said that for their Manila operations, they are going to hire more people this year.

“We’re definitely going to increase our head count. We’re hiring  developers,” Kim said, adding that manpower has been growing at 24 percent year on year.

Kim echoed what Evan Goldberg, Executive Vice President of Development, Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit, told a separate presscon that the Philippines will continue to be a significant market for  Oracle-NetSuite.

Kim also said the cloud market in the Philippines has tremendously improved over the last few years.

“I believe the Philippine cloud market is growing and the country has now increased their score on the cloud readiness index. The Philippines has moved ahead of Thailand in that regard,” Kim said.

Asked how  Oracle’s acquisition of NetSuite affected their dealings with their clients, Kim said the concerns were addressed immediately.

“I think those types of concerns for the Philippines customers were put to bed very quickly and easily because the clients deal with the same the people,” he said.

Meanwhile, at the conference, Jim McGeever, Executive Vice President of Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit reiterated that the company's  expansion initiatives will enable Oracle NetSuite Global Business Unit to launch more data centers, more field offices and more development centers globally, which will help to bring the leading cloud ERP suite to more organizations around the world.

“Leveraging Oracle’s global scale, we are able to massively accelerate NetSuite’s vision of bringing a single unified suite to companies all over the world,” he said.

“Oracle’s technology infrastructure and global reach enables us to help ensure customer success no matter where they are located in the world.”

NetSuite currently operates five data centers – three in North America, one in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and one in Dublin, Ireland. NetSuite expects to add a fourth North American data center in Chicago.

As part of the global expansion plans, NetSuite will leverage existing Oracle data centers in Europe and Asia.

In Europe, NetSuite is scheduled to open a data center in Frankfurt, Germany to remedy the lack of modern cloud computing offerings in the country.

In Asia Pacific, NetSuite plans to initially launch facilities in Australia and Singapore, followed by Japan and China.

The addition of Oracle data centers to NetSuite’s operations will provide even greater security, redundancy, performance and scalability for new and existing customers across the globe.Aside from data centers, there will be more field offices.

The addition of Oracle’s field offices significantly increases NetSuite’s ability to meet the rising demand for cloud ERP around the world.

NetSuite is establishing a new presence in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Mexico, France, Germany, Sweden, Dubai, China, India, Malaysia and New Zealand. In addition, NetSuite is expanding headcount in existing field offices by over 50 percent to provide better resources for customer demand.