IN his younger days, NetSuite Chief Executive Officer Zach Nelson was a certified Trekkie being an avid follower of science-fiction television series Star Trek created by American television screenwriter, producer and futurist Eugene Wesley “Gene” Rodenberry. As expected, Nelson has internalized the show’s mantra “space the final frontier,” which has perhaps influenced him in his current work focusing on promoting cloud computing.

“Recalling my younger days, I always followed Star Trek [the original batch led by Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner] for its vision and fantastic plots which Rodenberry has skillfully written,” said Nelson.

“I strongly believe that cloud computing will be the ultimate happening in the information communications technology world. There’s no major trend after cloud computing,” added Nelson in a recent interview with reporters during his visit to the Philippines.

Nelson, an accomplished software industry executive and visionary with more than 20 years of leadership experience, is excited in promoting NetSuite’s cloud-based products to the small medium enterprises in the Philippines. He added NetSuite products could help SMEs a lot, especially in managing their files. “Many SMEs don’t practice the backing up of data and document management,” said Nelson.

Moreover, he said Philippine SMEs also need to harness the potentials of social media to broaden their market share. “Social media is a major factor that will drive SME’s in the Philippines,” he said.

NetSuite opened its office in the Philippines in 2007 in Makati City and currently has nearly 500 employees, the largest non-US facility to date. The company’s local operations include software architecture and integration, finance and back office support, Professional Services, client management and technical support.

NetSuite Philippines has successfully built a strong network of business partners and have won key accounts like ABS-CBN, Jollibee, Diamond Fleet, Antech Inc. (makers of Dr. Edwards Sterilized Drinking Water), Institute of Culinary Arts and Food Service at FEU, Conti’s Pastry Shop and Restaurant, Summit Publishing and MOTECH Automotive Education Center Inc., among others.

Furthermore, Nelson is on cloud nine these days as cloud computing is the hottest item in the Internet horizons as the Philippine office offers a lot of potential to be a major part of the NetSuite’s global operations.

Nelson pointed out that cloud computing provides a tremendous advantage to the enterprise primarily because it has a comprehensive software system to run all aspects of a company’s business. “Most software applications are designed to run a department—accounting, sales, warehouse, manufacturing,” said Nelson.

He said a major advantage of NetSuite is the consolidation of all the applications in one package. “The big idea behind NetSuite was to build an application designed to run a business. Because it’s one business process, you do not need eight systems,” said Nelson.