UTS Takes Higher Education To The Cloud With NetSuite

SYDNEY, Feb. 6, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N), the industry's leading provider of cloud-based financials / ERP software suites, today announced the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), is the first Australian university to join the NetSuite SuiteAcademy program, an educational program designed to bring cloud-based business management solutions to university classrooms worldwide. The UTS Business School plans to incorporate NetSuite cloud ERP, including supply chain and accounting functionality, into the postgraduate degree curricula in 2013 for students pursuing MBA and Master of Business in Operations and Supply Chain Management degrees.

"UTS is in the process of reinventing business education," said Professor Roy Green, Dean of UTS Business School. "We're shifting away from the traditional approach of pushing students down specialist career paths, to creating graduates capable of boundary-crossing beyond specialisations – which is what's required of today's business leaders."

Driven by the growing global demand for teaching NetSuite cloud solutions in tertiary education programs, "SuiteAcademy" puts NetSuite software and academic-developed curriculum in the hands of students, giving the next generation of business leaders a competitive advantage by having worked with one of the world's fastest growing financial management solutions and the recent winner of Frost & Sullivan's Asia Pacific's Cloud ERP Vendor of the Year for 2012 award for cloud leadership excellence, exemplary performance and growth.

Building the NetSuite cloud into UTS Business School's MBA Program curriculum is part of this transformation. It provides postgraduate students and teaching staff with practical IT skills aligned to the global shift towards cloud computing. It can also offer experience across core disciplines built into NetSuite's single business management suite, including ERP, accounting and supply chain management.

"Our partnership with NetSuite is about producing work-ready graduates for a market rapidly embracing cloud computing. Given cloud software automates many traditional professional functions, our graduates need to be lateral thinkers capable of adding value to organisations in new ways," added Professor Green.

During the next four months, NetSuite plans to work closely with the UTS Business School to prepare curricula for next year's MBA intake. This will focus on providing students with practical, hands-on experience with NetSuite's modules, as well as a better understanding of how it supports process flows and revenue cycles throughout an entire organisation.

While planning to open the SuiteAcademy program to other Australian and New Zealand universities in 2013, NetSuite selected UTS Business School as the first in this region on the strength of its application of theoretical concepts to real-world cases and situations. The business school ranked in the top 100 in the 2011 QS World University Rankings for economics, accounting and finance. It was also awarded five stars in the QS Stars system, which recognises excellence in higher education. The school also maintains close ties with business leaders to ensure graduates are ready to meet the needs of businesses today and into the future.

"As the demand for cloud-based business management solutions has rapidly accelerated, business students must be ready to hit the ground running with a practical understanding of cloud computing and how it is increasingly becoming an integral component of everyday business practices," said Mark Troselj, managing director for APAC for NetSuite. "UTS is listening to the market as it shifts towards graduating students with the practical cloud computing experience the workforce requires."

NetSuite has been working with universities to introduce cloud computing into the curricula since 2009. Since officially launching SuiteAcademy in 2011, the program has grown 83 percent, with more than 100 tertiary institutions around the world now teaching NetSuite. The NetSuite cloud business solution is predominantly introduced in the third and fourth year of degree, and MBA programs, meaning that the next generation of managers, entrepreneurs, and business professionals can come to the job market with a stronger understanding of business operations and a clear understanding of the power of cloud computing. For more information about SuiteAcademy, please visit http://www.netsuite.com/suiteacademy.

Today, more than 16,000 companies and subsidiaries depend on NetSuite to run complex, mission-critical business processes globally in the cloud. Since its inception in 1998, NetSuite has established itself as the leading provider of enterprise-class cloud ERP suites for divisions of large enterprises and mid-sized organisations seeking to upgrade outdated client/server ERP systems. NetSuite excels at streamlining business operations, as demonstrated in a recent Gartner study naming NetSuite as the fastest growing top ten financial management systems vendor in the world. NetSuite has continued its success in delivering the best cloud financials/ERP suites to businesses around the world, enabling them to lower IT costs significantly while increasing productivity, as the global adoption of cloud is accelerating.

For more information about NetSuite please visit www.netsuite.com.au.

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SOURCE NetSuite Inc.