NetSuite's Retail Charge drives SaaS to Stores

Hosted software may be making the leap from tech craze to commodity, as CompUSA and hosted application vendor NetSuite announced a deal last week to resell NetSuite's business applications suite in all 240 of CompUSA's U.S. stores. It's the first time a mass-market retailer has offered on-demand software.

But don't expect customers to walk out of CompUSA stores with a NetSuite subscription in their shopping cart alongside the printer ink cartridges. Instead, customers will check out software demonstrations at the store and register their interest in the product. The CompUSA Business Services sales force will then contact the customer and close the deal online or in person.

The NetSuite-CompUSA relationship plays into the retailer's focus on training courses. CompUSA is betting that customers will have to get educated on the NetSuite hosted software. "This could potentially turn out to be a terrific channel for NetSuite," said Laurie McCabe, an AMI Partners analyst.

McCabe expects to see other retailers as well as e-tailers such as PC Connection and CDW rushing to offer hosted software. "SaaS is really becoming mainstream," she said.

Denis Pombriant, a Beagle Research analyst, agreed. "It's a big experiment that a lot of people like Staples and OfficeMax are watching."

Times sure have changed. When SaaS providers first tried to ally with traditional channel partners six to seven years ago, they were rebuffed and had to find or invent alternatives.

CompUSA considered providing on-demand software before, but wanted to finish a revamp of its services operation for small to midsize business customers before taking on additional partners.