NetSuite CRM Added to Linden Labs Reality

NetSuite, Inc., a vendor of on-demand business management software for small- and mid-sized businesses, has announced that Linden Lab, creator of Second Life, a 3D virtual world, has selected NetSuite to help manage its rapid growth.

In January 2007 alone, Second Life Residents converted their Linden Dollars into approximately $5 million, company officials say. NetSuite "operates invisibly in the background to manage back-end operational processes," NetSuite officials say, adding that Linden Lab is "in the process of implementing NetSuite CRM functionality."

"Second Life has grown nearly seven-fold in the last twelve months," said John Zdanowski, Linden Lab's chief financial officer. "We needed a system that could support our growth." Company officials say they needed business software that could be installed quickly -- in about 60 days -- and just as swiftly scale with its rapid growth.

Linden Lab chose NetSuite in large part for its ability to replace separate ERP and CRM applications with a single, integrated business management application, and its track record in scaling with growing companies, Linden officials say.

Second Life is a 3D online world with a population from 100 countries around the globe, in which the residents themselves create and build the world which includes homes, vehicles, nightclubs, stores, landscapes, clothing, and games.

The Second Life Grid is a development platform created by Linden Lab, a company founded in 1999 by Philip Rosedale, the former CTO of RealNetworks, to create a shared 3D experience.

A little over a month ago NetSuite introduced a host of new functionality extending their Software as a Service applications to mid-sized companies' e-commerce operations.

The new features -- including multi-channel, multi-store, multi-currency, and multi-language support, and automated Amazon.com (News - Alert)-like upsell/cross-sell capabilities -- are designed to "enable mid-sized companies to automate e-commerce operations and avoid the cost and pain of developing complex custom applications," NetSuite officials say.

NetSuite's bread and butter is selling hosted on-demand products for companies with Web stores of up to $10 million in revenue. They currently claim over 1,500 e-commerce sites running on NetSuite, generating an aggregate $290 million of sales revenue in 2006.

The new set of NetSuite advanced features emphasizes globalization, multiple Web stores and multiple companies and their subsidiaries. Additionally, NetSuite tweaked the business process customization to "meet the specific needs of larger, more complex businesses and their industry requirements," company officials say.

David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. For more articles please visit David Sims' columnist page.

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