NetSuite promises full SuiteCommerce launch by 2013

NetSuite has told V3 that it is planning general availability for its SuiteCommerce platform in 2013, having constrained the rollout earlier due to huge demand. 

Talking to V3 on Wednesday, Andy Lloyd, general manager of commerce products at NetSuite, said that after having first given the product to some customers under embargo at the start of the year it saw huge interest in the platform.

SuiteCommerce, an end-to-end e-commerce platform, was then publicly announced in May in San Francisco at its SuiteWorld event, with select customers the first to start using the system throughout the year.

Lloyd said that the firm is now hoping it has all the pieces in place to offer the product to all interested firms from 2013.

"We are progressively ramping up next year and starting in January we will start selling the product, although still on limited release. And then in the second half of next year we will remove the restrictions," he said.

"The only caveat is that if we see the same level of interest that we saw at the beginning of this year, we will have to make sure our partner ecosystems is able to support us."

He explained the firm is also working to ensure its professional services team is fully trained up to fully understand the platform so they can help customers get their implementation live.

Lloyd also said that the firm was not worried that rivals could steal a march on its offering given the long time to full availability.

"For our rivals to come in and offer anything of a similar proposition they would have to build a cloud-based ERP system - and we've seen anyone else be successful doing that - and then build a cloud-based e-commerce platform too," he said.

Holger Kisker, principal analyst at Forrester, told V3 the rollout process was a smart move from NetSuite as it would ensure a smooth transition from launch to implementations.

"It's better to rollout a solution in a controlled way - to ramp-up the number of customers and improve the solution based on early customer's feedback," he said.

"I regard six months as a best practice and anything up to one year still fully acceptable - this is how software companies should launch new solutions in the market."