To all SMB owners,

If you are a small and medium business owners and deciding which software to buy to run your ebusiness, here is my analysis and I hope this helps you in your decision making...

After working for past 7yrs in enterprise solution and speaking to several small and business owners, resellers and vendors, I would like to shed some light on this topic.
There is a huge change in enterprise space, Microsoft is collaborating all its software to enter in a big way, the leader QuickBooks is back to its drawing board to address the "All In One software" for SMB, netsuite is going great guns, new Competitors like Interprise are entering this space and others like Everest are trying to hold their ground..

NetSuite has advanced further with its package and is doing good in the market as of now, compared to other competitors, but has downside to its strategy, just think about it, if you are going to spend $100 per mth per user (all options) for one year and for every other year of usage and you still don't own nothing, what is your Total Cost of Ownership (TOC)?? But Pros Netsuite is backed by the leader in database, knows how to run their business and has very effective VAR program compared to other solution which is mentioned in this post.

Look at the following points if you are buying software from a vendor

1. Who are the founders of the company/current CEO, their track record their objectives for running this company just to make profits so the investor gets their bucks and eventually sell to big fish

2. What technology is used to build this software? Because that clearly shows how dependant the vendor is on other software giants like Microsoft, Oracle, Intuit etc... If somebody is using Delphi let's say how many people really use Delphi today even though it is powerful tool

3. What is their selling strategy? Direct or VARS, direct clearly says "I don’t want to give my piece of cake to others ..." so how can you expect to eat the cake, VAR channel they will put themselves to help you grow, and guide every step they believe in customer relationship and retention

4. Do they have Software Development Kit (SDK) Why is this required, if you want to grow big and if you want to add-on more functionality that is specific to your business/industry this is a must so that you are not totally dependant on the software vendor and spend huge amounts for customization, and VARS love SDK's it makes them feel FREE

5. Is this software built on Open source code which means that everybody is working to build this software but nobody to support or nobody owns ownership for support and boils down to your VAR/resellers ability

6. Price - the most important, nothing comes free and even if it is what's the catch read the small letter prints . Use RFP and make a matrix of "who is who", which helps you to decide the winner.
What is the cost of implementation, cost of support, cost of learning/training your employees (Keep in mind employees quit all the time and the new ones you hire should be knowing the software already or you have to reinvest in training)

7. Web based is the "way to go", the new Interprise is on its way of promising note, because of being web based enterprise, it is developed using Microsoft technology, since it is new in this space I expect the prices would be lower as they have to gain market share.
But beware they are new that means they have to unearth few issues such as bugs in software, stability, customer satisfaction, support and stay in competition.

8. No harm, in trying this beta but if you are planning to go live then weigh the risks and options, whereas Netsuite has great name and is a great product, has VAR's, well established customer market share, kicking the thick client (client server applications like Everest) out of competition, but has to be hosted always, which kind of sucks coz of Total Cost of Ownership...

I'm not suggesting you to buy specific software but weighing all options out there in the market and this could allow you to make your decision easy.

Let me know if these thoughts really helped you in your decision.

Thanks