NetSuite Exposed -
Data Center Reliability/Security/Support

NetSuite is hosted and delivered from a Level 3 Communications, Inc (Nasdaq: LVLT) data center located in the San Francisco Bay area. NetSuite is SAS 70 audited which may provide some comfort to SEC governed enterprises in the United States for their Sarbanes Oxley, section 404 compliance requirements. However, in Netsuite’s SEC S-1 filing delivered near the time of the company’s IPO, they admitted to having no redundant data center for both service delivery and customer data. The report also revealed that the company’s single third-party data center is located in a part of California vulnerable to earthquakes.

As specifically stated by the company:
 
"We do not currently operate or maintain a backup data center for any of our services or for any of our customers' data, which increases our vulnerability to interruptions or delays in our service."

Many potential customers drop Netsuite from their vendor short-list due to this lack of redundancy. Netsuite does offer a Service Level Agreement (SLA) of 99.5% uptime measured monthly. However, Netsuite’s definition of downtime excludes designated periods of maintenance. It is under these terms that Netsuite offers to credit a full month’s service fees for any month that the uptime is not achieved. A limited view of NetSuite system uptime or downtime can be obtained at http://status.netsuite.com/status.html.

NETSUITE CUSTOMER SUPPORT

In early 2007, NetSuite began the process to move the vast majority of their customer support services to Makati City, Manila, in the Philippines. The trend of moving help desk support offshore is not new and Philippine organizations have proven that they can deliver successful call centers and help desk operations. However, poor customer support has been a major frustration for many Netsuite customers and the transition to Makati has compounded the situation.

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