July 22nd, 2009
Wedding Bells: NetSuite + OpenAir + QuickArrow
When PSA (and SaaS) Got BIG!
Today, NetSuite announced it is buying QuickArrow, an Austin, Texas based PSA (professional services automation) vendor. This $20 million deal will put QuickArrow with OpenAir, another PSA solution that NetSuite acquired a little over a year ago. Click here for the official release.
NetSuite has been aggressively targeting service industries and has developed a number of solution capabilities beyond just the PSA set. Additionally, NetSuite has a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), a full set of financial applications and many other SaaS (Software as a Service) capabilities.
This deal brings NetSuite serious service industry street credibility. Combined, QuickArrow and OpenAir have 80,000 users and some of the largest service firms in the world as customers.
Deals like this should wake up those ossified, old-school ERP vendors who are still on the fence about their own SaaS offerings. Vendors like NetSuite are:
- growing organically (i.e., product line and revenue growth)
- continuing to innovate
- growing inorganically (via acquisitions)
- building impressive market share
Old-school ERP vendors should realize that continuous market share gains by SaaS vendors into old ERP accounts are going to start to hurt the old-school firms’ bottom lines. When SaaS vendors got the occasional CRM deal, it really didn’t hurt. Now, SaaS vendors are increasingly their:
- vertical industry penetration
- breadth of product line
- up market movement
The times, they are a changin’ and the old ERP vendors aren’t….
This blog explores the intersection set between services and technology. If it impacts either space, it will be covered here. Brian Sommer is a former Accenture partner. He did an 18-year tour of duty there and ran three small practice units (Finance Center of Excellence, HR Center of Excellence and Software Intelligence). He’s sold service projects in almost every continent and remains just as current on both services and technology today as ever before. Brian is currently CEO of TechVentive, a strategy consultancy servicing technology providers, and a research analyst with Vital Analysis. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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