Presented by Oracle NetSuite
When Evan Goldberg began NetSuite in 1998, his vision was radically easy: give entrepreneurs access to their business data anytime, anywhere. On the time, most enterprise software lived on local servers.
As an entrepreneur himself, Goldberg understood the frustration intimately. "I had fragmented systems. All of them said something different," he recalls of his early days.
NetSuite was the primary company to deliver enterprise applications entirely through web browsers, combining CRM, ERP, and ecommerce into one unified platform. That breakthrough idea pioneered the cloud computing and software-as-a-service (SaaS) era and propelled supersonic growth, a 2007 IPO, and an acquisition by Oracle in 2016.
Still innovating on the leading-edge
That founding obsession — turning scattered data into accessible, coherent, actionable intelligence — is driving NetSuite because it reshapes the subsequent generation of enterprise software.
At SuiteWorld 2025 last month, the Austin-based firm unveiled NetSuite Next. Goldberg calls it "the most important product evolution in the corporate's history.” The explanation? While NetSuite has embedded AI capabilities into workflows for years, he explains, Next represents a quantum leap — contextual, conversational, agentic, composable AI becoming an extension of operations, not separate tools.
AI woven into on a regular basis business operations
Most enterprise AI today gets bolted on through APIs and conversational interfaces.
NetSuite Next operates in a different way. Intelligence runs deep in workflows as an alternative of sitting on the surface. It autonomously reconciles accounts, optimizes payment timing, predicts money crunches, and surfaces its reasoning at every step. It doesn't just advise on business processes — it executes them, transparently, inside human-defined guardrails.
"We built NetSuite for entrepreneurs in order that they may get great details about their business," Goldberg explains. "I feel the subsequent step is to find a way to get deeper insights and evaluation without being an authority in analytics. AI seems to be a very good data scientist."
This architectural divergence reflects competing philosophies about enterprise technology adoption. Microsoft and SAP have pursued rapid deployment through add-on assistants. NetSuite's five-year development cycle for Next represents a more fundamental reimagining: making AI an on a regular basis tool woven into business operations, not a separate application requiring constant context-switching.
AI echoes and deepens cloud innovation
Goldberg sees a transparent through line connecting today's AI adoption and the cloud computing era he pioneered. "There’s type of an infinite sense of possibility that exists within the technology world,” he says. “Everybody is fascinated by how they will leverage this, how they're going to get entangled."
When NetSuite was starting, he continues, "We had to return to customers with the cloud and say, 'This won't disrupt your operations. It's going to make them higher.'" Today, evangelizing enterprise leaders on advanced AI requires the same approach — demonstrating immediate value while minimizing implementation risk.
For NetSuite, continuous innovation around maximizing customer data for growth is an undeniable theme that connects each eras.
Latest transformative capabilities
NetSuite’s latest AI capabilities span business operations, while blurring (in a superb way) the lines between human and machine intervention:
Context-aware intelligence. Ask Oracle adapts responses based on user role, current workflow, and business context. A CFO requesting point-of-sale data receives financial analytics. A warehouse manager asking the identical query sees inventory insights.
Collaborative workflow design. AI Canvas functions as a scenario-planning workspace where business users articulate processes in natural language. A finance director can describe approval hierarchies for capital expenditures —"For amounts over $50,000, I would like department head approval, then CFO sign-off" — which the system translates into executable workflows with appropriate controls and audit trails.
Governed autonomous operations. Autonomous workflows operate inside defined parameters, reconciling accounts, generating payment runs, predicting money flow. When the system recommends accelerating payment to a supplier, it shows which aspects influenced the choice — transparent logic users can accept, modify, or override.
Open AI architecture. Built to support Model Context Protocol, NetSuite AI Connector Service enables enterprises to integrate external large language models while supporting governance.
Critically, NetSuite adds AI capabilities at no additional cost — embedded directly into workflows employees already use each day.
Security and privacy from Oracle infrastructure
Built-in AI requires robust infrastructure that bolt-on approaches sidestep. Here, based on NetSuite, tight integration inside Oracle technology provides operational and competitive benefits, especially security and compliance peace of mind.
Engineers say that’s because NetSuite is supported by Oracle's complete stack. From database to applications to analytics, the system optimizes decisions using data from multiple sources in real time.
"That's why I began NetSuite. I couldn't get the info I wanted," Goldberg reflects. "That's one of the differentiated elements of NetSuite. Once you're doing all of your financial close, and also you're fascinated by what reserves you're going to take, you may have a look at your sales data, because that's also there in NetSuite. With NetSuite Next, AI may also assist you to make those kinds of selections."
And performance improves with use. Because the platform learns from thousands and thousands of transactions across 1000’s of shoppers, its embedded intelligence improves in ways in which bolt-on assistants operating adjoining to core systems cannot match.
NetSuite's customer base demonstrates this scalability advantage — from startups that became global enterprises including Reddit, Shopify, and DoorDash; in addition to promising newcomers like BERO, a brewer of non-alcoholic beer founded by actor Tom Holland, Chomps meat snacks, PetLab, and Kieser Australia. The unified platform grows with businesses slightly than requiring migration as they scale.
Keeping fire within the belly after three a long time
How does an almost 30-year-old company maintain progressive capability, particularly as a part of a mammoth corporate ecosystem? Goldberg credits the parent company's culture of continuous reinvention.
"I don't know in the event you've heard about this guy Larry Ellison," he smiles. "He manages to seemingly reinvent himself each time one among these technology revolutions comes along. That hunger, that curiosity, that desire to make things continuously higher imbues all of Oracle."
For Goldberg, the only biggest challenge facing NetSuite customers centers on integration complexity and trust. NetSuite Next addresses this by embedding AI inside existing workflows slightly than requiring separate systems.
As well as, updates to SuiteCloud Platform — an extensibility and customization environment — help organizations adapt NetSuite to their unique business needs. Built on open standards, it lets enterprises mix and match AI models for various functions. SuiteAgent frameworks enable partners to construct specialized automation directly into NetSuite. AI Studios give administrators control over how AI operates inside specific industry needs.
"This takes NetSuite's flexibility to a brand new level," Goldberg says, enabling customers and partners to "quickly and simply construct AI agents, connect external AI assistants, and orchestrate AI processes."
“AI execution fabric” delivers measurable business impact
Industry analysts increasingly argue that embedded AI features deliver superior results in comparison with add-on models. Futurum Group sees NetSuite Next as an "AI execution fabric" slightly than a conversational layer — intelligence that runs deep in workflows as an alternative of sitting on the surface.
For midmarket enterprises navigating talent shortages, complex compliance frameworks, and competition from digital-native corporations, the excellence between advice and execution matters economically.
Built-in AI doesn't just inform higher decisions. It makes those decisions, transparently and autonomously, inside human-defined guardrails.
For enterprises making ERP decisions today, the selection carries long-term implications. Bolt-on AI can deliver immediate value for information access and basic automation. But built-in AI guarantees to remodel operations with intelligence permeating every transaction and workflow.
NetSuite Next begins rolling out to North American customers next 12 months.
Why 2026 will belong to the AI-first business
The bet underlying NetSuite Next: Enterprises reimagining ERP operations around embedded intelligence will outperform those just adding bolt-on conversational assistance to existing systems.
Early cloud computing adopters, Goldberg notes, gained competitive benefits that compounded over time. The identical logic appears more likely to apply to AI-first platforms.
Simplicity and ease of use are two big benefits. "You don't should dig through numerous menus and understand all the analytics capabilities," Goldberg says. "It’ll quickly bring up an evaluation for you, and you then can converse in natural language to hone in on what you’re thinking that is most significant."
The tools now think alongside users and take intelligently informed motion. For midmarket and entrepreneurial corporations, where the gap between having information and acting on it may be the difference between growth and failure, that sort of autonomous execution may determine which enterprises thrive in an AI-first era.
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