NetSuite’s Vice President of International Sales, Johnny Jones, said the Australian operation has more than quadrupled in size this calendar year to currently stand at 45 people.

“While other vendors are pulling back and implementing hiring freezes, NetSuite is growing strongly with the addition of key managers and staff in the areas of Professional Services, Marketing, Pre-Sales, Architect Development and Channel Management,” he said.

“We’ve opened a new office in Sydney, which is our regional headquarters for Asia Pacific and we’re continuing to source quality talent to support our continued growth.

“As the market continues to tighten, we’ve expecting more and more companies to take advantage of the advanced functionality and greater affordability of our Software as a Service model to enable them to increase productivity while reducing their overheads.”

Mr Jones pointed to the recent 2008 Software Satisfaction Awards in London, where NetSuite scooped the pool in the CRM category, winning both the mid-range and enterprise software awards and reinforcing the benefits of the SaaS approach over traditional packaged software.

“Here in Australia, we’re attracting customers from across the broad spectrum of business, with particular success in the wholesale distribution and services sectors. NetSuite has significant strengths in addressing the specific needs of these market niches and our strategy for 2009 will include focusing additional resources to target these areas with tailored product offerings.

“We’re also working on expanding our channel strategy in order to educate our distribution partners on the best ways to sell and support the NetSuite offerings,” he said.

NetSuite Inc recently announced its 36th consecutive quarter of continuous growth, with revenues for Q3 2008 up 44 per cent over the same period last year.  While Australia currently represents only a small percentage of global sales, the local operation is enjoying exponential growth in the wake of the recent release of the NetSuite OneWorld integrated business management solution.