Salesforce.com and NetSuite square up

CRM middleweights NetSuite and salesforce.com are squaring up to one another over claims from NetSuite that it's got its San Francisco-based rival beaten.

NetSuite has made bullish claims about having the edge over salesforce.com with its latest release, NetSuite CRM+, and says it is not only stealing customers from under the nose of its rival but is also encouraging customers to switch - branding them "salesforce deserters".

Such bold rhetoric may well have caught salesforce.com unawares as it has long focused its attentions more on overthrowing Siebel. But it says it actually welcomes the input of NetSuite, which at least supports its on-demand model of CRM.

The perhaps predictable suggestion from within salesforce.com is that this is the 'sincerest form of flattery' rather than cause for concern.

Tim Knight, director of product marketing at salesforce.com, told silicon.com: "We welcome more businesses to the on-demand party. We have reached the tipping point for this model of software delivery, it is rapidly becoming the de-facto standard for the use of business applications."

However, Knight dismissed NetSuite's claims that its position is under threat.

"Salesforce.com continues to lead this market and provide the innovation that our customers demand," he said. "We lead not only as an application vendor, but also as an on-demand platform provider."

NetSuite has certainly mobilised a good number of customers to cite why they chose its latest CRM offering over salesforce.com's.

Tony Conti, VP of sales for point of sale specialist icarz, said: "Unlike salesforce.com, NetSuite allows us to use one system for leads, prospects and customers."

Jeff Thompson, COO of fixed wireless broadband provider TowerStream, said: "We switched to NetSuite because salesforce.com doesn't have the extra features NetSuite does, such as order management and integration with the website for lead generation."

Nick Vaney, VP, finance and corporate development of clinical solutions ASP Nightingale Informatix, said: "We decided to switch from salesforce.com to NetSuite for better visibility across our entire company, particularly in the advanced CRM features that touch each part of our growing organisation."

Eli Katz, president of interior design retailer The Inside Store, said: "We were outgrowing our current solutions and looked at salesforce.com but found that it didn't offer what we needed to integrate all our systems, including our website."

Despite its rival parading such a roll-call of on-message customers, salesforce.com's Knight believes his company still meets all its customers' needs.

He also appears untroubled about the one deserter in the pack, boasting of a healthy customer list of companies happy to stick with salesforce.com for now.

"We allow our customers to tailor their on-demand applications to suit their unique business requirements," said Knight. "That is why we have 13,900 unique customer installations, and 227,000 subscribers to our service."