NetSuite continued its quest to become the next Salesforce.com yesterday with the release of its 2007.0 service.

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies are lining up to follow in the footsteps of Salesforce.com, which has built a value of $5bn and a reputation as one of the fastest-growing businesses in enterprise IT.

NetSuite’s latest tilt is part of a plan to offer a SAP-style suite of applications for small and mid-sized businesses. These include Easy ERP, a set of wizards to make setup, import and administration simpler, and the ability to control multiple country business units in their respective local currencies. The suite also integrates analytics, obviating the need for third-party products or data warehousing, the firm said.

NetSuite vice-president of international products Craig Sullivan said the suite is intended to provide a set of business applications that can be used by “mere mortals” rather than specialists.

Steve Sydes, divisional director of ACAL, an electronic components distributor with about 300 seats running NetSuite, said business forecasting is a strength of the suite. “For a company like us, it’s a really powerful product that you can run a lot of the business on,” he added.

California-based NetSuite, which is majority owned by Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison, is planning to float later this year. Customers include Carphone Warehouse, which has an installation covering thousands of seats.

Meanwhile, another SaaS company, employee performance management firm SuccessFactors, said it will shortly add the capability to create organisation charts that help users visualise the way businesses are run and better understand the capabilities of staff. SuccessFactors issues monthly releases of its service and the charting capability will be added at some point in the next three releases, said John Buie, managing director of business transformations services at the company.