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.