SAN JOSE: The cloud software market is in a fighting mood at present, with NetSuite and SAP taking pot shots at one another across the US as they host their user conferences in the same week.

With SuiteWorld on the west coast, and Sapphire on the east in Orlando, SAP had a three-hour head start on its rivals, so it’s no wonder NetSuite chief Zach Nelson was keen to get his jabs in early, using his opening keynote to chide the German firm.

“SAP talks a lot about cloud and they’re having their user group conference at the same time as we are. And while we’ll spend a lot of time introducing a new product, NetSuite for manufacturing, SAP are talking about databases in the cloud,” he said.

“Talking with customers, not a single one asked us for databases in the cloud – they want new features and new app capabilities, but not databases. I think it’s a telling week to see what we’re delivering this week and what SAP are doing.”

Nelson has good reason to be upbeat about his firm’s offerings, as NetSuite basks in the glory of the first quarter to 2013, with revenue of $91.6m, a 32 percent increase on the same period in 2012.

Understandably, SAP hit back, with SAP co-CEO Jim Hagemann Snabe claiming NetSuite is likely “intimidated” by the firm’s push to the cloud.

“There is a market for NetSuite in the public cloud suite for small companies, but there we have [Business] ByDesign. We haven’t talked about it today because it’s a special case for the small companies but ByDesign is doing quite well, winning over larger and larger companies and I can understand if NetSuite is feeling a little bit threatened,” he said.

Clearly, both firms are keen to make sure they pick up as many new customers from the push to the cloud as possible, and both rolled out headline customers to sing their praises.

NetSuite called on the likes of Qualcomm, extreme sports camera firm GoPro and Williams-Sonoma – the US equivalent of John Lewis, owning brands such as Pottery Barn. Meanwhile, SAP rolled out F1 racing team McLaren and German banking giant Deustche Bank.

Both firms are no doubt hoping their fighting talk will catch the eyes of other companies considering moving more of their IT estate to the cloud. With so many firms on this path, isn’t there enough cloud business to go around Is there the need for such hostility – can’t we all just get along

Garter analyst Chris Pang agreed, saying given the current state of the cloud market there is “more than enough to go around”.

“There’s more than enough opportunity for everybody to enjoy the riches. If you look at customer demographics out there, there is opportunity for replacement of large systems and mid-sized systems. Fundamentally there will be some vendor swapping but, if you net it all out, I’d say there’s room for everybody to grow in this market place,” he told V3.

He added: “Some will grow more than others, but it’s not a case of someone is going to drop out of the market because someone is going to eat all their lunch.”

As such, Pang said that NetSuite’s key challenge now is to execute on the products and strategy it has built out in recent years. “Two years ago it was all about getting systems integrators involved, people like Accenture, and last year it was all about SuiteCommerce. Now, it’s all about proving they are executing,” he said.

“They’re really trying to set themselves up to scale – this will take some time to accomplish but in terms of getting basic building blocks in place from product perspective, that’s coming together.”

One area where NetSuite is hoping to grow is the UK and Europe, as plans for a UK data centre and expansion into Germany – the home of SAP – demonstrate.

So, while there may be enough in the market to go around, it’s unlikely the barbs will die down any time soon.

SAN JOSE: NetSuite has become the latest firm to confirm its intention to open a data centre in the UK in order to expand its footprint for data storage, following on from similar announcements from Salesforce and Oracle.

The firm’s chief executive Zach Nelson said NetSuite intends to open the location within the next 12 months and the UK is the most likely location, although he admitted other areas such as Amsterdam were still in consideration.

The company is likely to partner with a data centre provider, possibly Savvis, for the offering, noting that the outlay should be about $3m to get up and running.

The announcement comes after rival Salesforce announced its intention to open a UK data centre to make it easier for the firm to meet the needs of customers in Europe that have so far been wary of the cloud because of US data protection regulations.

However, Nelson said NetSuite had not been so affected by this issue, and the move was more about improving site and applicatation responsiveness.

“It’s great to have the systems closer to end user customers. The biggest value will be that the systems are closer to them so the applications and their website will perform faster,” Nelson said.

NetSuite is also looking to expand its presence into the German market, in a notable challenge to rival SAP in its own backyard, and is hoping its newly announced cloud tool for manufacturing will prove of interest.

“It’s a manufacturing country so it should work well but it’s also a technology country and we work well with tech companies, so it’ll be interesting,” Nelson said.

Earlier at the event Nelson had taunted SAP with barbs about whether the firm’s cloud offerings were relevant for businesses. SAP is currently hosting its own customer event, Sapphire, with firms like McLaren on hand to talk up its platforms, such as data analytics platform HANA.

Google executives took to the stage on Wednesday to showcase the company’s latest offerings for developers. The keynote, which included the introduction of an unlocked, stock Android version of the Samsung Galaxy S4 as well as updates to the Google+ platform, and Google Music and Search, did not see the usual fanfare that accompanies the Google developer conference.

Sought-after platforms such as Google Glass were nowhere to be seen. But according to industry analysts, there were still plenty of announcements to get the IT community excited.

Gartner research vice president Carolina Milanesi said: “It would be very easy to look at the event today and call it a non-event – no hardware, no parachuting. But this year had much more about the ecosystem and how to make it successful than last year did.

“It was all about strengthening the ecosystem and making it more profitable for Google but also for their partners.”

Milanesi told V3 that among the most useful updates in the first day of the event were the Google+ additions. With the service increasingly becoming a component of all Google products, updates will become more essential.

“Whether we like it or not we will be using Google+ as it becomes the door into the ecosystem. I think the enhancements they made will make it much more appealing and the forced sign in will get people on it,” Milanesi explained.

For Greg Sterling, senior analyst and program director at Opus Research, the rollout of conversational search was of particular interest. The platform, designed as a component the Google Now platform, could make interacting with the personal assistant platform more natural and efficient.

“The mapping features and upgrades were also impressive,” Sterling told V3. “Maps is a ‘bread and butter’ product for Google and the new capabilities and redesign put more distance between the company and its major competitors: Apple, Microsoft and Nokia.”

Investors, meanwhile, got something to smile about near the end of the company’s keynote address, when Larry Page made an appearance. Gartner research vice president Van Baker said that the appearance – which comes in the wake of Page’s disclosure of a throat condition that affects his speech – reflected well on the Google boss.

“I was impressed by Larry Page and his willingness to take the stage after his revelation about his medical problems yesterday,” Baker told V3. “He is refreshing compared to some of the other CEOs in the tech industry.”

Cloud storage and sharing firm Box has announced that its service is now ISO 27001 compliant.

The company said that its enterprise service now meets the security standard for data protection and has earned approval for information security management standards. The certification verifies that the service is now able to provide a high standard of security for customers using Box.

The company hopes that the certification, along with its compliance with other standards, will help to build customer confidence and bring further enterprise business.

“This certification demonstrates our commitment not only to the security and control of our customers’ data, but also our commitment to our global customer base,” said Box enterprise group product marketing manager Grant Shirk.

“We started down this path last year and our compliance efforts are gaining steam – we received our SOC-1/SSAE16 Type II, SOC-2 Type II report and announced our support for HIPAA compliance in just the past quarter.”

The lack of confidence in security and compliance has long been seen as a major hurdle in the uptake of enterprise cloud storage platforms.

Box, however, believes that by adding ISO 27001 and other security compliance credentials it can restore user confidence as well as press its business into new international markets.

“While this is an important certification for Box, it’s just one more step along our long-term roadmap and commitment to providing the highest level of transparency and assurance to our customers about the quality and security of our platform, top to bottom,” Shirk explained.

“It’s also a critical component of our ability to serve our international customers in Europe, the Middle East and Asia – where we’ve seen our customer growth more than double in the past year.”

Oracle has announced a new UK data centre plan, which will be focused on the G-Cloud initiative.

The new data centre will be located in Thames Valley and will be designed to comply with standards for government cloud hosting. In addition to security considerations, the facilities will allow the government to ensure that the data is not being hosted on foreign soil.

Such a facility would then be able to provide cloud services for public sector departments under the UK’s G-Cloud guidelines. The framework, designed to cut IT spending and improve efficiency, pushes government departments to work with approved cloud service providers. Oracle is just one of the hundreds of IT suppliers now on the framework.

Oracle president Mark Hurd said, “We applaud the G-Cloud program and believe it represents a significant step in the provision of public sector IT services. We are delighted to bring our technology, applications and experience to the initiative and to make significant investments in the new data centre and infrastructure that will be dedicated to the UK government’s G-Cloud initiative.”

In total, the G-Cloud includes some 708 suppliers of cloud services, many of which are small and medium enterprises. Earlier this month, the framework was expanded with 368 additional providers.

In addition to serving as a means for cutting IT spending and improving efficiency, the G-Cloud initiative has been hailed as a possible boon for data security. By moving data into the cloud and off dated or obsolete hardware, government agencies can help to make sure private data is secured.

Despite its advantages, even G-Cloud’s biggest backers have admitted that the platform has had problems gaining traction with public agencies.

Software AG has launched Live, a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) suite that will allow application developers to easily create and deploy agile and cloud-based software.

The platform’s core component, AgileApps Live, is available now and allows developers to build applications that can instantly be deployed on mobile devices and that come with pre-built integration across social networks.

AgileApps Live is the same technology the firm acquired from its purchase of online app platform LongJump in April. Darren Roos, Software AG chief operating officer, told V3 that the LongJump application had not been altered since the acquisition, but had just been rebranded as the AgileApps Live component.

“Developers these days need to easily be able to integrate business applications they create with any social network, whether it be Twitter or LinkedIn, or an internal social network. LongJump does all of those things natively. So an application developer could create an order application that would quickly respond to customers on Twitter about delays in their orders,” said Roos.

Roos said other applications that developers could create using Software AG Live include loan applications or HR onboarding applications. “The suite will be useful in any instance a business needs to quickly deploy an application. Developers can take data from existing business systems and create agile apps within days. There is no code writing involved, just configuration,” he added.

Another component of the Live suite is the Process Live collaboration platform, which will allow developers in different departments and locations to easily work together on business process modelling. This capability will be available in the coming months.

“For Process Live, we are using the technology we acquired with the IDS Scheer acquisition in 2009. ARIS was the company’s core product and allows developers to model processes when designing business processes applications. Now a developer in Sydney could easily work with a developer in London and discuss whether to add in particular stops to the model, such as whether to link to data in an SAP app,” said Roos.

Roos said while Software AG allows developers to easily automate business process models on-premise, this capability would not be offered in the Software AG Live release. “We’ll introduce this in the future but there are technology reasons why this automation capability is not available in the cloud yet,” said Roos.

Additionally an Integration Live component of Software AG Live will allow developers to integrate cloud-based software with other cloud software, or with private cloud or on-premise installations, such as SAP or Salesforce applications.

Finally, Roos said Software AG would be announcing Dynamic Cloud Scaling later this year, which will allow Software AG Live customers to easily scale applications they develop. “So when application usage peaks, we can offer them more cloud to take that extra load,” he said.

SAN JOSE: NetSuite has updated its manufacturing offering to offer a set of features for companies producing goods that want embrace the benefits of operating in the cloud.

The update to the NetSuite for Manufacturing Edition includes a number of key features designed primarily for manufacturers in a evolution from its existing products that were designed for firms working with manufactureres.

NetSuite chief executive Zach Nelson claimed that “manufacturing is the final industry to come to the cloud” and that the functionalities on offer, such as standard costs, work-in-process tracking and routings, will all help make it easier for firms to operate online.

In particular, he said new manufacturing processes set to revolutionise the industry will ramp up the demand for cloud-hosted tools.

“We’ve had this product in development in stealth mode for about two years and there’s a sea change coming in manufacturing. Not everything will be outsourced anymore. You’ll see people coming back onshore driven by new capabilities like 3D printing,” said Nelson.

“Every company is becoming a cloud company and the cloud is going to transform how manufacturers operate. We are getting to the market place at the right time with the right product.”

As part of this announcement NetSuite also announced an integration with CAD manufacturing firm Autodesk, between Netsuite’s ERP services and Autodesk’s Product Life Management (PLM) service PLM 360, as design services also move to the cloud.

This is designed to help customers run their design, manufacturing and sales channels through a single portal as well as integrating customer feedback and internal social tools, such as Netsuite’s own SuiteSocial.

“It’s a pure web base environment – this is something dramatically different from anything done before in the PLM world,” added Autodesk’s senior vice president of manufacturing Buzz Kross, speaking at the event.

SAN JOSE: NetsSuite chief executive Zach Nelson wasted no time in laying into rival SAP during his SuiteWorld keynote on Tuesday, mocking the German firm for its approach to the cloud, and taking a potshot at Microsoft too.

Kicking off his presentation, Nelson said the fact both NetSuite and SAP, with its Sapphire conference in Orlando, are having their user conferences at the same time is a chance for the industry to assess the state of each firm’s offerings.

“SAP talks a lot about cloud but they’re having their user group conference at same time we are and while we’ll spend a lot of time introducing a new product, NetSuite for manufacturing, SAP are talking about databases in the cloud,” he said.

“Talking with customers not a single one asked us for databases in the cloud – they want new features and new app capabilities, but not databases. I think it’s a telling week to see what we’re delivering this week and what SAP are doing.”

Nelson also touched on research from analyst house Gartner that pegged SAP’s growth in the ERP market at minus three percent as further proof the firm is failing to meet business’s needs.

This same data was also used these to slight Microsoft’s own ERP offering, Dynamics.

“I was talking ‘to a partner and they said they shouldn’t call it Dynamics, they should call it Static, and that’s pretty darn accurate. There’s nothing going on in the Microsoft cloud, particularly in the ERP space.”

Despite Nelson’s withering criticism, SAP looks to be a strong player in the cloud space. The company recently unveiled its HANA Enterprise Cloud service, a move which analysts believe could bring big dividends for SAP.

SAN JOSE: Cloud computing is now such a central part of the IT enterprise landscape that firms cannot ignore its benefits any longer, according to the chief information officer of mobile chip giant Qualcomm.

Speaking at NetSuite’s Suiteworld event on Tuesday Norm Fjeldheim (pictured left) said that the firm has been a keen adopter of the cloud, including products from NetSuite, and that IT teams are now accepting that the cloud is a key part of the future of enterprise IT.

“We were an early adopter of SaaS applications – we liked it as a solution for our business and I see this trend continuing,” he said, explaining that the firm had used NetSuite for the launch of a new division in Mexico due to the speed of getting services live in the cloud.

“Even security guys are now saying, ‘alright, the cloud is here to stay and I’m going to have to deal with this’.”

Fjeldheim also believes firms that have been slow to embrace the cloud, and remain sceptical of its benefits, risk being left behind. “Cloud is a positive force and I think it’s a big change for the industry – if I were Oracle or SAP I’d be really worried.”

The comments on cloud from NetSuite and Qualcomm come in the same month V3 launched the May edition of the V3 tablet app focused on cloud computing, which is available now for download from the iTunes store.

It can be downloaded free by registering on the V3 website and then using the same credentials when prompted to get the app for free. It costs only £1.99 if you do not want to register.

Google is now offering 15GB of free storage on its Drive cloud storage platform, in a move to entice more customers to its services by merging the data storage offered between Gmail and Drive.

Google users were previously offered 5GB of free storage for Drive and another 10GB for Gmail, but now users will get 15GB of storage across both services.

Google’s director of product management Clay Bavor wrote: “With this new combined storage space, you won’t have to worry about how much you’re storing and where.

“Maybe you’re a heavy Gmail user but light on photos, or perhaps you were bumping up against your Drive storage limit but were only using 2GB in Gmail. Now it doesn’t matter, because you can use your storage the way you want.”

Google is also giving Google App users a larger amount of storage. Companies that pay to use the firm’s apps will now be granted a total of 30GB storage.

Storage of files created with Google Apps will not count against the cap. Instead, only emails and attachments filed in the cloud will be included as part of the 30GB limit.

Google has been ramping up its cloud storage offering since introducing it early last year. Drive launched in April 2012, allowing Google users to store files and data in a public cloud controlled by the firm.

Drive has seen much convergence with Google’s other software in recent months. Last November, Drive became integrated with Google+ to offer file sharing and Google launched its preview tool earlier this year.

The announcement comes just ahead of the Google I/O developer conference, where the firm may reveal more numbers on users of its Drive and Gmail products.