AI: The Transformation That Goes Beyond the Cloud, According to Evan Goldberg, NetSuite Founder

Beyond sharing the latest updates NetSuite is making available to users, he explored his vision on the ERP market and other topics of interest to the global IT industry

Grupo Portal ERP was invited to Suiteworld 2025 in Las Vegas, Nevada, and conducted an exclusive interview with Evan Goldberg, founder and Executive Vice President of Oracle NetSuite's Global Business Unit.

Beyond sharing the updates the company is making available to users, he explored his vision on the ERP and enterprise software market, as well as other topics of interest to the global IT industry.

Grupo Portal ERP: NetSuite just held its largest annual event, where it reveals the main updates users can access. What are the general expectations for the 2025 edition of Suiteworld?

Evan Goldberg: Overall, this Suiteworld was quite different due to the introduction of a significant change to NetSuite: Next, along with other new technologies, but most importantly for us is bringing these innovations closer to our users so they get excited about the idea of testing them in a few months in their own businesses.

It's a very important change for NetSuite, and attendees were able to dive into these innovations, understand how to use them, how they can leverage them in their own companies, where they work and where they don't. We want everyone present to commit to testing NetSuite Next in a few months, when it becomes available in preview.

We came with great curiosity, with a desire to collaborate with our customers and to learn how we can transform NetSuite into the best possible enterprise system thanks to the power of AI.

Grupo Portal ERP: How much has the market evolved in AI adoption? Have we reached a more mature level of use by companies, is it possible to obtain effective results?

Evan Goldberg: At Suiteworld 2024 we mainly showed how AI helped improve processes. Going further, it's been about three years since the beginning of this revolution, when ChatGPT arrived to transform the world.

We're experiencing a process similar to what happened with the internet in 1994-1995; initially people only used it to search for information and communicate with friends and, over time, many more uses were explored, initially for consumers; and it took a few years before companies realized they could create better enterprise systems with the internet, like NetSuite, which was the first cloud ERP.

But the evolution wasn't immediate, it was a process that took a few years for people to understand how to make this new technology truly relevant for businesses. Something similar is happening with AI. We've moved beyond the excitement of being able to ask simple questions to interact in a real way, as if it were a person.

I see that companies have also taken the successful application of AI in their core functions more seriously. So, between last year and this year, there's definitely an inflection point — we're reaching maturity in adoption, integrating it into enterprise systems far beyond text, achieving true understanding of data.

Grupo Portal ERP: You mention that NetSuite Next represents a significant change to NetSuite. What makes it so different to be considered "NetSuite's biggest change in 27 years," as mentioned in the Keynote?

Evan Goldberg: We've been working on NetSuite Next for several years, even before ChatGPT launched, and we knew that for NetSuite to be relevant for the next 25 years, as it has been until now, we would need to change part of the architecture. I believe the way users utilize enterprise systems will change even more in this new AI era than it changed in the cloud era.

The cloud provided a series of changes for businesses, especially for small companies, which gained access to technology previously exclusive to large corporations, since they didn't need to worry about installing or maintaining software or databases. It was incredibly useful.

But now, companies of all sizes will see the evolution that AI offers, like NetSuite Next. The main impact will be felt by SMBs, which typically don't have access to a specialized data analyst or a supply chain specialist. They have people doing ten things at once.

So, with a technology like NetSuite Next, which combines LLM models powered by global information and integrates them with internal NetSuite data, it's possible to provide knowledge equivalent to professionals that only large companies can hire.

It's like having an instant expert, leveling the playing field for SMBs. That's why I believe NetSuite Next is the biggest change to NetSuite to date and I hope all our customers agree when they use it in their businesses.

This technology can help companies grow, since they don't need to hire more staff. They still need many people, but now everyone can be more effective because they have this expertise at their fingertips. Additionally, we believe it will automate many time-consuming tasks that prevent them from performing higher-value activities for the business.

Grupo Portal ERP: Speaking of SMBs, which are one of the most important sectors worldwide, especially in Latin America, one of the biggest challenges in offering technology is the complexity of their numerous fiscal norms and regulations. How has NetSuite supported its customers in this scenario?

Evan Goldberg: There are important and difficult regulations in all parts of the world. Countries like Brazil, the US, and India are the most complex.

But today, again, everything is simpler with AI, as it's an ally in keeping us updated with regulations, because it can explore all the information available on the internet and summarize it. That's part of what's changing. Compliance is a challenge even for a large company like ours.

We're also developing something within Ask Oracle called NetSuite Expert, so companies can ask questions about NetSuite and understand how it works.

I believe that for a user in these countries, or anyone with questions about regulations, it will be very useful to be able to ask how this will impact their management and get an answer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. I think that's exciting for those who need to deal with regulatory compliance in such complex situations.

Grupo Portal ERP: In a similar scenario, how does NetSuite help multinational companies manage clients and employees, considering they need to deal with different regulations in each country where they operate?

Evan Goldberg: For that we have NetSuite OneWorld, which offers multinational and multi-subsidiary capabilities within NetSuite, helping companies manage various subsidiaries, business units, and legal entities, national or international, from a single platform.

Of our 2 million users, 1.4 million belong to companies using NetSuite OneWorld because, today more than ever, companies want to internationalize from the start of their operations — it doesn't matter if they're from Latin America, Europe, Asia, or the United States — because they have products that people want everywhere and they're diversifying their supply chains.

That's one of the reasons companies adopt NetSuite: when they internationalize, their ERP systems can't keep up with them in the process. In contrast, we invest a lot of time ensuring we comply with global regulations to be with them in their expansion process.

And, again, I believe AI can help us comply with regulations in more than 200 countries and territories, being a support for managing the business, ensuring regulatory compliance, and staying updated on everything necessary to continue operating. AI can help them succeed.

Grupo Portal ERP: We've been analyzing how one of the tools that helped transform companies years ago was the cloud; today, it's AI. But, if we could analyze the future of ERPs from your perspective, which technology will dominate in the coming years?

Evan Goldberg: I believe we haven't yet explored AI's full potential and that it will still take many years to fully leverage it. I'm not sure what will happen after that.

There will certainly be more technologies that will help us make businesses more efficient. I've always believed that this task of helping companies manage their own businesses more effectively, obtain and better leverage information, and automate processes is continuous. Nobody says: "Everything in my company works perfectly. There's nothing more I want to know. There's nothing I want to make more efficient."

So, I believe in the coming years we'll continue using AI so companies become even faster and more efficient; so they can realize their dreams and visions more easily. That's what it's all about.