OAKLAND – It’s opening day! This is a special day in America. This is a day when America’s national past time – baseball – is celebrated throughout the country.
NetSuite, one of the top developers of integrated business applications for small and mid-size businesses, not just here but also in Canada, is using opening day to release a major upgrade to its flagship product.
The company has invited me to an event at the McAfee Coliseum, the home of the Oakland A’s. The A’s are playing against the most hated team in sports – the New York Yankees at the stadium nicknamed “the Net”. The place is also referred to as the “Black Hole” during Oakland Raider football games, but for me it will always be known as the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum.
This stadium was the place for the infamous Earthquake game during the 1989 World Series, which was postponed for a week because of the devastating earthquake that registered a 7.1 on the Richter scale.
The Bay Area in April will commemorate the 100th anniversary, if you want to call it that, of the great earthquake of 1906 that leveled 28,000 homes and killed more than 3,000 people. I do not mean to put a damper on NetSuite or their plans for opening day. I just wanted to put everything into its proper, historical perspective. I am sure NetSuite would like to hit a home run right off the bat and shake up the market a bit.
The following is an edited timeline of activities.
3:30 P.M. Pacific Time
The Ford Excursion stretch limousine I’m in arrives safely at the McAfee Coliseum in Oakland. Like I said they call this stadium “the Net”, but it doesn’t have WiFi access or any other kind of Internet access. In fact, the place does not allow laptops because all large bags including laptop bags are prohibited.
3:35 PM Pacific Time
Darth Vader – yes the Darth Vader, the evil lord of the Star Wars movies – comes by to shake my hand. At first I thought this guy mistakenly came to the stadium to see Raiders’ opening day game and not the A’s. Of course Lord Vader does not speak, but then again he doesn’t have to since he needs no introduction. The NetSuite event, by the way, is called Suite Wars, just in case you were wondering why a guy in a Darth Vader costume was in the crowd.
3:37 PM Pacific Time
I await my badge for the event and I meet Christina Rohall, NetSuite’s public relations manager for the first time. I thanked her for clearly spelling out the dress code for this event. I hate showing up to an event under or over dressed.
3:45 PM Pacific Time
I don’t expect to meet any Canadians let alone Canadian partners at this event, but low and behold Tony Bone, a former top executive at CSB comes by to say hello. Bell Business Solutions acquired CSB last year. Bone’s company is called Zeroedin and he is a NetSuite reseller covering the Toronto and California markets.
3:50 PM Pacific Time
Christina Rohall introduces me to a Canadian NetSuite customer, Clean-Mark Services Group of Toronto. Clean-Mark is using NetSuite to help them branch out into selling cleaning products.
4:09 PM Pacific Time
I sit down at the press conference area at the club level of the stadium, which is adjacent to the men’s room. Next to me is Justin Kuykendall, an account manager for NetSuite. He tells me a little bit about Froogle.com, which is Google’s Ebay site. NetSuite hooks into Froogle and also Ebay for inventory purposes helping people shorten the supply chain. By doing this products can be listed and possibly sold within 24 hours.
4:21 PM Pacific Time
Justin Kuykendall reveals a secret to me and to some of the people around us. He is holding the seat next to me for someone from the Oakland A’s.
4:22 PM Pacific Time
Speculation starts. The customer directly ahead of Justin Kuykendall thinks it will be Nick Swisher, the A’s right fielder. The analyst beside him thinks it might by Bobby Crosby, the American League rookie of the year last year. I say: “I think it’s going to be Billy Beane.” Beane is the A’s general manager. He is best known, however, for the best selling book Money Ball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game (authored by Michael Lewis). The customer next to me asks how I can be so sure it’s not a player. Well, Brooke Hammerling, a PR practitioner from New York told me so inside the Excursion limo during the ride up to the stadium. But I played dumb and said nothing. Kuykendall swears to us he doesn’t know who it is.
4:25 PM Pacific Time
The LCD flat panel monitor on stage is from Sceptre. I haven’t seen that brand in maybe 10 years. Sceptre once had an event at the Toronto Zoo to show off the Komodo dragon and their new line of CRT monitors.
4:28 PM Pacific Time
Well it is Billy Beane. He walks up to me, shakes my hand and asks if he can hang out with us.
4:30 PM Pacific Time
The press conference opens up with a very funny video parodying the Star Wars film. The video takes shots at NetSuite competitors. There are characters such as Darth Microsoft and his evil Great Pains Ray, which he launches at the Planet SMB. The ray sucks money out of the planet.Planet SMB sends a distress call to the NetSuite leadership team of Zach Nelson, president and CEO and Evan Goldberg, founder, chairman and CTO. Some cheesy lines from the video gave the crowd a chuckle. Lines such as: “Your monopoly will not save you. The OnDemand model will defeat you.Then Darth SAP, using a bad imitation of Arnold Schwarzenegger, makes his appearance.Finally Darth Wannabee, who is really Salesforce.com come in to say “OnDemand good, but suites are bad. Why would you want to use one system when you can use 20?”
4:31 PM Pacific Time
A confused Beane looks at me. I tell him Darth Wannabee is Salesforce.com. He nods and looks on.
4:35 PM Pacific Time
The video is cheesy, but it gets a good round of applause.
4:37 PM Pacific Time
Zach Nelson with Chewbacca arrive on stage. Nelson informs the audience that the last great software battle will be for the mid-market. Chewbacca growls and exits the stage.
4:42 PM Pacific Time
Zach Nelson, who at one time worked for McAfee, mentions Larry Ellison’s name, but as Obi One Ellison. Ellison is NetSuite’s great benefactor.
4:48 PM Pacific Time
Zach Nelson compares the mid market to the enterprise market of ten years ago, but on steroids. He adds it is a market that is also very fragmented.
4:49 PM Pacific Time
Zach Nelson says when he worked for a large company in the enterprise space he made million dollar mistakes and still got promoted. That would not happen if he worked for a company in the mid-market.
4:54 PM Pacific Time
Evan Goldberg is introduced to the audience by Zach Nelson. Goldberg proceeds to demonstrate NetSuite Version 11, but there is a black screen. Goldberg says the PC went to sleep just when the Version 11 dashboard comes up. He gets it up and running. Goldberg quipped that he has saved the audience from watching him and Nelson dueling on stage with light sabers if the demo failed.
5:04 PM Pacific Time
During the demo of Version 11 the system crashes again. Goldberg logs on and is back to the same page he left before the crash virtually instantly. I thought this unfortunate mishap work in NetSuite’s favour and it was clear to see being browser based enabled Goldberg to get back to his demo quickly.
5:11 PM Pacific Time
Evan Goldberg asked for a volunteer from the audience. It is the customer who thought Nick Swisher was attending the press conference. Goldberg saves his script deployment after making some changes to a contract. He then emails the volunteer the contract for his approval on to his RIM Blackberry.
5:15 PM Pacific Time
Zach Nelson reemerges on stage just as the customer gets pinged with the contract fo