NetSuite SuiteWorld: omni-channel ERP for the Internet of Things

  • B2B - Business to Business
  • B2C - Business to Consumer
  • B2B2C Firm A to partner firm B and then on to consumer
  • G2G Government to Government (public body agencies acting like cloud hosting and or application suppliers in their own right)
  • X2X Machines to Machines inside the Internet of Things

Flat design for aesthetic simplicity

Moving from conceptual big picture to solid product news, key announcements at this year's show initially kicked off with the firm's re-architecting of its core UI presentation layer. NetSuite says it has spent three years in the design process and now uses what it calls flat design', a strategy function intended to emphasise crispness and clarity. What this actually means is the use of easy-to-read fonts, attractively redesigned icons and graphics, increased whitespace and greater aesthetic simplicity.

In terms of break out sessions and seminars there was something for everyone this year. Technical know-how discussions analysed how firms might achieve better website performance by looking at the real guts of what they present online. Jeff Binder, cell leader for ecommerce performance and scalability at NetSuite explained that every HTML page is made up of a number of http requests which will be made to the server and the total size of the page determines the number of requests made.

This means that web architecture is more important than many companies may have considered. The average number of requests for an average page is around 100, so any website making 200 requests will never be fast inside current web construction paradigms.

Binder urged audience members to look at Apple's web pages for Store, Mac and Support and so on as these make less than 50 requests. Simplicity (and connection speed too of course) counts, it appears.