March 17th, 2005
A tale of two services: NetSuite and Salesforce.com
I recently spent some time talking shop with NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson and
Salesforce.com’s CEO Marc Benioff about their respective software-as-a-service, hosted application platforms. Salesforce.com has been pushing software frontiers with a development platform for creating new applications and integrating external systems within its platform. Today, NetSuite is announcing NetFlex, which includes features for customizing and building applications that follows the Salesforce.com model of creating an applications platform. In my column on ZDNet I explore how the two companies are taking different market approaches and try to deconstruct what the two CEOs are saying about each other’s products.
Dan Farber, editor-in-chief of CNET News.com, has more than 20 years of experience as an editor and journalist covering technology. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
