On-Premises ERP Versus Cloud Computing: Too Late for the Sky?

On-Premises ERP Versus Cloud Computing: Too Late for the Sky?
Friday, August 28, 2009
Bruce Richardson

Early last week, I spent a morning reviewing SEC filings and Seeking Alpha transcripts for the most recent earnings calls from Epicor, QAD, and NetSuite. I wanted to see how well the two on-premises vendors were doing relative to the ERP-in the-Cloud company. A quick note: Most readers think of vendors like NetSuite as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) or on-demand provider, but I’m going to use the cloud nomenclature, since the term is rapidly replacing the other descriptions in vendor presentations.

While it’s not entirely fair to compare the three firms, since NetSuite doesn’t sell manufacturing applications (but it does have manufacturers as customers), there are some very interesting observations.

Epicor: 125 new customers

For the second quarter ending June 30, 2009, Epicor reported total revenue of $100.4M, down 21.5% over the year-earlier period. License revenue fell 28% to $17.5M. While maintenance slipped 2.8%, it still represented 47% of revenue in the quarter. The company reported non-GAAP net income of $6.7M.

Epicor added 125 new customers to its base of nearly 21,000 companies in manufacturing, distribution, retail, hospitality, and services. Although the company has a cloud product for retail, it hasn’t released a cloud version of Epicor 9 yet.

QAD: Six new cloud customers, with “20 live customers by year end”

For the second quarter ending July 31, 2009, QAD reported total revenue of $61.3M, down 26.2% from 2Q09. License revenue dropped 41.2% to $6.7M. Maintenance and other revenue contributed $32.1M or nearly 53% of total revenue. The company reported a net loss of $1.4M, including stock compensation expense.

Although QAD didn’t provide data on the number of total new customers, it did say it signed six cloud customers in the quarter, including five U.S. companies and an Australian firm that plans to deploy QAD Enterprise in sites in Australia, Brazil, China, the United States, the UK, and Singapore. A QAD executive said the company plans to have “20 live customers by year end.”

QAD is installed at 6,000 sites. It no longer breaks out the customer count.

NetSuite: 270 new customers

It was a different story at NetSuite. For the second quarter ending June 30, 2009, the company reported total revenue of $40.3M, up 10.3% over the year-earlier period. It had a GAAP net loss of nearly $5M for the quarter. Conversely, it had a non-GAAP net income of $687,000.

In the quarter, NetSuite added 270 new customers to its base of 6,000 accounts. This is up from the 240 new accounts added in the first quarter. If you read the company’s 10-Q, which was filed August 10, 2009, you’ll see that new customers accounted for $11.6M in new revenue. This more than offset the $7.9M decrease in revenue from existing customers and other sources. Half of that was because of a $3.9M drop off in professional services. The balance was attributed to customer churn and other factors, such as the reduction of revenue recognized from the company’s Japanese distribution rights agreement. The latter resulted in a net decline of $0.02 in profitability.

In the filing, the company noted “existing customers’ purchases of additional user subscriptions and modules (or ‘upsell’) largely offset the impact of customer churn and decreases in subscription and support revenues (or ‘downsell’) for existing customers.”

Will cloud adoption force public companies into the arms of private equity?

Even though I’ve only presented one quarter’s worth of data, I also looked at the previous quarter and earlier periods too. Since the start of economic downturn last September, on-premises vendors have been harder hit than their cloud brethren. This is especially true for ERP providers.

While the largest enterprises may be the last to replace their financial applications and the bulk of their ERP systems with a cloud offering, it will happen, but only when the largest vendors endorse it, or companies like NetSuite and Workday are viewed as viable replacement products. The economics for buyers are too compelling, which is a theme we’ll explore in future editions of First Thing Monday.

The publicly-traded vendors have more of a challenge, though. Software as a service and cloud represent entirely different business models. Although this is especially true in the shift from large, upfront deals to subscription fees, it also shows up in the company’s business model.

Look at QAD, for example. In its 2009 annual report, the company noted that it had 1,500 employees, including 625 in services and support, with 400 consultants in 23 countries and 15 support centers. It also noted it had 350 developers in R&D centers in the United States, India, China, Ireland, Australia, and Belgium. Some of this comes courtesy of acquisitions, but how many services and support people, trainers, developers, and sites will QAD need if the new business shifts to mostly cloud sales?

Finally, Epicor and QAD are on the top of many private equity firms’ acquisition wish lists, despite the challenges of actually completing a deal.

Wall Street loves cloud companies

In addition to appealing to customers, there are also shareholders to consider. As I write this, NetSuite has the highest market cap of the three at $882.06M. Epicor is valued at $397.54M, while QAD trails at $132.24M. The valuations are based on the closing price on Thursday, August 27.

Since the first trading day of the year, NetSuite’s share price is up 41.4%, Epicor 26.7%, and QAD 4%.

What do you think?

Are the on-premises vendors too late for the sky? If they continue to ignore the trend or move too slowly, will they find themselves running on empty, or pleading to their physicians, “Doctor, my eyes have seen the years and the slow parade of fears”?

As always, I welcome your feedback and ideas—brichardson@amrresearch. Let’s continue the discussion on my blog, The Future of Enterprise Software.

Finally, please take a look at a new research product from AMR Research, Voice of the Customer. We just published the annual outlook on software spending, with some striking findings.

Can NetSuite Surge While SAP Decelerates?

NetSuite executives stopped by our offices a few days ago to brief us on the new NetSuite for Manufacturers product. This release adds new functionality for product assembly, inventory management, bill of materials, and work orders. While not going deep into manufacturing operations or planning, it is a logical extension to the platform offered for wholesalers and distributors that also do some final assembly or kitting.

During our briefing, NetSuite executives made it clear that they were going to be more aggressive in the positioning against SAP Business ByDesign, a competing software-as-a-service (SaaS) product that also features applications for manufacturing, finance, and customer management. Earlier this year, SAP said it would "reduce its accelerated investments around SAP Business ByDesign in 2008." While SAP is still selling the product, it has tempered its plans to sell to 10,000 new customers annually. This won't happen until 2010 or so.

If you looked at the NetSuite press release, there was little subtlety: The headline read: "NetSuite Enters SAP's Core Market," a reference to the fact that most of SAP's 47,800 ERP customers are manufacturers. In the first paragraph, there were references to NetSuite's plans "to exploit the prolonged delay" of the competitor's products. The theme also carried over to the company's website: "NetSuite Takes on SAP with Manufacturing Solutions."

Smart to provoke Goliath?

While I was surprised by the boldness of the headline, press release, and website, I think this is a smart bit of positioning if NetSuite's marketing people can get the press to bite. Essentially, NetSuite wants to turn the broader SaaS application space into a two-horse race. If it is successful, any article on SAP Business ByDesign should also include an update on or quote from NetSuite. Marc Benioff did this brilliantly when he turned any CRM coverage into a Siebel versus salesforce.com debate.

I’ll bet at least one of my colleagues and several of our competitors will dismiss NetSuite's move as a gimmick. That argument is too simplistic.

Look at some of the company's recent moves. In early June, NetSuite made its first acquisition with the purchase of OpenAir for $26M in cash. OpenAir develops SaaS software for professional services automation and project portfolio management for project and time-based firms such as professional services, consulting, legal, accounting, and government contracting. OpenAir's 300 customers bring NetSuite's professional services base over the 1,000 customer mark.

OpenAir adds another entry point to new customers

This acquisition gives NetSuite a broader footprint as well as a new entry point. Like the SAP Business ByDesign team, NetSuite customers always start with a single pain point: financials, CRM, or e-commerce. Using the classic land-and-expand strategy, NetSuite will add more seats and modules in the next 12 months as customers come to see the benefits from having a single integrated system and set of dashboards as opposed to operating a spider's web of piece parts.

In April, the company launched NetSuite OneWorld, which allows customers to consolidate all global financial and customer data on a single platform. This includes support for all things multi, such as multicurrency financial consolidation, quotas, and forecasts; multilanguage; multicountry; and multibrand websites.

Ecosystem expands to 60 third-party applications and 21 industries/micro-verticals

In February, NetSuite introduced NS-BOS (NetSuite-Business Operating System), its unique entry into the platform-as-a-service market. In just four months, more than 1,000 software companies have inquired about building software on top of the NetSuite platform or creating their own micro-vertical systems based on NetSuite. To date, there are 60 third-party applications, including 4 unveiled as part of the NetSuite for Manufacturers launch.

More impressive has been the company's success in attracting third parties interested in using NetSuite's whole product line to create their own industry-specific systems. So far, developers have begun offering software across 15 sectors, including agriculture equipment dealerships, commercial floor cleaning, deep seaport marinas, government contractors, insurance, and pharmaceutical distribution.

For its part, NetSuite is targeting six core verticals that it plans to tackle on its own. These include software firms, wholesalers and distributors, services companies, IT value-added resellers (VARs), media and publishing entities, and e-commerce providers. This is a different approach from SAP which has vowed to stick with a vanilla solution - no customization, no vertical versions - at least for the near term.

Next target: HCM? SAP integration?

On the competitive front, Plexus Systems has successfully sold SaaS into hardcore discrete manufacturing sites for awhile, particularly in automotive, A&D, and other industrial firms. Lately, its success in these environments has pulled it into adjacent manufacturing environments such as food and beverage and medical device. While other vendors are fine-tuning their SaaS models, Plexus Systems has truly capitalized on SaaS ERP, leading with manufacturing execution and quality management modules and then extending that footprint into more traditional ERP functionality, including financials and HR. For its part, I'm not sure NetSuite will go much deeper than light manufacturing.

As for SAP, if you look at the SAP Business ByDesign product map, there are eight wedges in the diagram: financials, compliance, supplier relationship management, project management, supply chain management, executive management, CRM, and human capital management (HCM). Looking at the SAP wheel, NetSuite's moves would eliminate the need for most, if not all, of supply chain management and supplier management. That leaves HCM as the one major obvious gap between NetSuite and SAP. That’s the next likely acquisition or partner area.

While SAP has made it clear that it does not intend to sell SAP Business ByDesign back into its high-end base, that might make an interesting market for NetSuite. Can it position its products as a replacement for some of the aging MRP II, ERP, and/or CRM applications at smaller plants, distribution sites, or sales offices? While it would likely result in expensive and often futile sales cycles, it is intriguing nonetheless. Companies like Cast Iron Systems already provide integration appliances that link SaaS vendors like salesforce.com to SAP backbones.

Will NetSuite get to 10,000 SaaS customers before SAP?

Right now, NetSuite has about 6,000 customers, compared to just over 150 for SAP Business ByDesign. On the other hand, it is far smaller than its rival. The company expects 2008 revenue to be in the range of $156M to $159M. This compares to analyst estimates of $18.81B for SAP (source: my.yahoo).

NetSuite should get to 10,000 SaaS customers first. Given that it added 430 new customers in 4Q07 and another 400 in 1Q08, it could take two or more years to get there. SAP has opened a window, but it's unclear how long NetSuite will benefit from the breeze.

What do you think? Are manufacturers ready for SaaS, or should NetSuite focus exclusively on service industries? Is the comparison to SAP a smart marketing tactic or just a gimmick? Will NetSuite make it to 10,000 customers, or will Oracle acquire it before Zach Nelson gets his company there?

As always, I welcome your feedback and ideas. You can comment on my blog—firsthingmonday.net—or contact me at brichardson@amrresearch.com.