Oracle Buying NetSuite For $9.3 Billion

Oracle is buying ERP and omnichannel software provider NetSuite in a deal valued at around $9.3 billion, both companies announced.

The move reunites NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson with Oracle chairman Larry Ellison, who co-founded San Mateo, CA-based NetSuite in 1998. Ellison stepped down as NetSuite CEO two years ago.

Oracle CEO Mark Hurd said his company and NetSuite's cloud applications are complimentary.

"We intend to invest heavily in both products — engineering and distribution," Hurd said in a statement.

NetSuite — which reported a 30 percent year-over-year Q2 sales increase — provides cloud-based financials including ERP and omnichannel commerce software suites for distributors, manufacturers and retailers. Its software enables businesses to automate operations, streamline process and access real-time data on-demand.

NetSuite has more than 30,000 customers in more than 100 countries.

"NetSuite will benefit from Oracle's global scale and reach to accelerate the availability of our cloud solutions in more industries and more countries," said NetSuite's Nelson. "We are excited to join Oracle and accelerate our pace of innovation."

The transaction is expected to close this year.

ECi M1 Announces Partnership with Global Software, Inc.

Microsoft Excel automation tools enhance ECi M1 reporting experience

ECi Software Solutions, a leader in industry-specific information technology solutions, announced a new partnership between Global Software Inc. and the official launch of the ECi M1 Advanced Financial Reporting tool.

This partnership with M1 enables customers to use live M1 financial data, with powerful drill-down capability to the lowest level of detail. Global Software’s Spreadsheet Server tool unlocks the financial data held in an ERP solution. Simple to install and use, M1 users can leverage spreadsheet functionality while ensuring the integrity of critical financial data is maintained. 

“M1 Advanced Financial Reporting has numerous benefits; it combines reporting, account inquiry, and journal inquiry into one application as well as eliminates the need to download or re-key/export spreadsheet data,” says Daniel Noonan, Managing Director of ECi M1. “This new partnership with Global Software, Inc. further demonstrates our focus on helping manufacturing businesses to succeed.  We have integrated their tool with M1 and now our customers can enjoy further efficiencies in their business. Initial customer feedback has been entirely positive. We are pleased that our M1 users can now quickly retrieve and manipulate data within a desktop tool everyone is familiar with—Microsoft Excel.”

“We are excited to work with the team at ECi M1,” says Spencer Kupferman, Vice President, Worldwide Corporate Affairs at Global Software, Inc. “ECi has built a comprehensive ERP system and, in conjunction with Spreadsheet Server, ECi M1 customers now have access to a powerful Microsoft® Excel-based tool that is already used by over 5,000 businesses globally.” 

About Global Software, Inc.

Headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, Global Software Inc. has established itself as the no.1 worldwide provider of Microsoft® Excel-based automation tools. For almost 40 years it has worked with leading ERP systems in the world. Global Software Inc, supports over 5000 businesses in 39 different countries. For more information, please visit www.glbsoft.com. 

About ECi

ECi Software Solutions provides best-in-industry business and e-commerce software solutions for growing companies. For more than 30 years, ECi has served the manufacturing, office equipment, managed print services, office supplies, contract office furniture, business intelligence, lumber and building materials, hardware and jan/san sectors. Privately held, ECi is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas, USA, with offices throughout the U.S., Australia, the U.K. and the Netherlands. For more information, email info@ecisolutions.com, visit www.ECiSolutions.com, or call (800) 959-3367.

Infor Announces InForce - Next Generation Social ERP and Marketing Built on Force.com

InForce Everywhere, InForce Order Management and InForce Marketing to Deliver 360-Degree View of Customer Data Across the Enterprise

Infor, a leading provider of business application software with operations serving more than 75,000 customers, and salesforce.com [NYSE: CRM], the enterprise cloud computing company, today announced that Infor will deliver three applications, built on Force.com, salesforce.com's social enterprise platform. The three new InForce applications will bring the power of the back office to the front office, and throughout the social enterprise - helping customers collaborate and drive growth. Additionally, salesforce.com made an investment in Infor as part of the agreement.

Through the partnership, Infor will build and deliver InForce Everywhere, a native Force.com application that brings ERP data into Salesforce; InForce Order Management, a quote, order and proposal management application; and InForce Marketing, which will leverage Infor CRM Epiphany, a leader in recommendation engines, for global marketing automation technology - all on Force.com. Infor will also develop additional applications on Force.com.

Comments on the News

• "Sales professionals in Infor's large manufacturing customer base need fast and easy access to the critical product and order data in our applications, and we will render that rich data in Salesforce," said Charles Phillips, CEO of Infor. "This partnership will help customers focus on building and selling great products instead of configuring databases, middleware, BI tools, or disk drives. Our customers need to automate processes in hours and days, not months and years, and skip the classic 3-by-3 ERP project - 3 years, 300 million, and 3 CIOs. They need results faster."
• "Companies transforming themselves into social enterprises want new ways to run their business," said Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com. "Infor joins salesforce.com in recognizing these transformations must span across the entire company."

Available later this calendar year, InForce Everywhere will offer:

• A 360-degree view of invoice, contacts, quotes, shipments, receivables, orders, and RMAs (return merchandise authorizations) across the enterprise.
• A way for Salesforce users to view orders from Infor ERP applications.
• Access to customer information and transactions from the Salesforce Sales Cloud and Service Cloud using InForce Everywhere.
• Connection to ION, Infor's standard integration platform.
• Salesforce Chatter, which will make all of this data social to more effectively and quickly engage with customers through features like social profiles, status updates and real-time feeds.
• Infor's 700+ sales people and more than 800 channel partners the ability to resell bundled Salesforce CRM into more than 75,000 customers.

InForce Order Management will:

• Deliver a comprehensive quote, order and proposal management application built on Force.com.
• Integrate with Salesforce CRM to give Sales and Service Cloud users a clear and accurate view of pricing and availability.

InForce Marketing will:

• Offer a comprehensive global marketing automation system built on Force.com.
• Include inbound and outbound campaign management and lead maturation integrated with the Infor CRM Epiphany recommendation engine.

About Infor

Infor is a leading provider of business software and services, with operations helping more than 75,000 customers in 164 countries improve operations and drive growth. To learn more about Infor, please visit www.infor.com.

About Salesforce.com

With more than 100,000 customers, salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing company that is leading the shift to the social enterprise. Social enterprises leverage social, mobile and open cloud technologies to put customers at the heart of their business. Based on salesforce.com's real-time, multitenant architecture, the company's platform and application services include:

• Salesforce Chatter, a secure, private social network for your business
• Salesforce Sales Cloud, for sales force automation and contact management
• Salesforce Service Cloud, for customer service and support solutions
• Salesforce Radian6, for social media monitoring and engagement
• Salesforce Data.com, for the most complete source of accurate business data
• AppExchange, the leading marketplace for enterprise cloud computing applications
• Force.com, for custom application development
• Heroku, for building social and mobile customer apps
• Database.com, the world's first enterprise cloud database

VAI Webinar: Automate sales tax compliance with ADP's Sales & Use Tax System

August 24, 2011 at 2:00pm EST

Are you managing an array of sales tax challenges such as tax rate changes, tax law changes and additions, tax form changes, increase in audits and/or agency notices? If you answered yes to any of these issues then VAI & ADP can help alleviate those challenges. VAI and ADP have partnered to provide VAI S2K Enterprise customers access to ADP's Sales and Use Tax System which automates the sales tax compliance process in its entirety. ADP's sales tax solution provides significant time savings, reduce costs, and mitigate the risk of calculation and filing errors through S2K Enterprise Software.

To register, visit: www.vai.net/events