Evan Goldberg, Executive Vice-PRECLE NETSUTE, has a Computer Science Student Hinterland in Artificial Intelligence (AI) That Pre-Dates His Joining Oracle as a Software Engineer in 1987.
Goldberg Spoke to Computer Weekly at the Suplier's Recent SuiteConnect London 2025 Conference. What follows below is an edged transcript of the interview, which revival covers his thoughts about the development of artificial intelligence in financial applications, Including from HIS OWN Company.
Previous Goldberg Interviews with Computer Weekly Include:
The interview is also discussed on informatechtarget's ERP Confab Podcast in the context of the rain of agentic ai as the putative new vanguard of ai innovation in business applications.
Where do you think we are in terms of the narrative of ai in the business world now? We've had conversations about this before, Including One About Ai as a 'sleeping giant'
I consider it very early days stil. There have been tremented advances that have allowed us to do things such as netsuite Text enhance And now are allowing us to do things like the suite analytics assistant. So, the first phase was generating text. Now, it's having human conversations to use the tools that we alredy have in our suite.
And then the next step will be autonomous activity to do things for you, to find things for you proactively, and that's going to revolutions to also revolutionise business applications, in some senses Making Large Parts of It Disapperaar, What Disappearar, WHICHE AIT Good thing.
The Things that will get surfaceed to you will be [what] You really need to see or to do, and that's only going to be to people's benefit trust our users spend a lot of time in netsuite – sometimes that's that's productive time, Sometmes that''s Timetimes that 'Time Whered that' TIMETIEMES THE REF Feeding data to be in the system. They have to spend time with the system to get the benefit and to get the return on investment of their time.
But if they didn’t have to spend the time at all, that would be even better. So, that's where we want to go and it will fundamentally change how these systems look and what it is to use them. Everything is going to be much different.
Does that fit under the category of agentic [AI],
That's what it's being called right now, and you can add a lot of agents, but I think it's stil going to be netsuite,
Are you happy with the term 'agentic'?
That was not really an English word a year ago, so it's not my favorite word. But if that what everyonebody uses to describe it, then i'll use it to describe it. I feel it really appeals to the technical side of things, but I'm not sure it means to the average user? An agent could be a spy or a travel agent – i mean, it just doesn'st meaning that much.
Or a contact center agent, an actual human being
And people undersrstand whatsE agents mean. But i'm really focused on the end result, on how the user benefits, and not as much on the “Inside Baseball” terminology. That's why I love the terms “Advice and Assistant”, because that!
Tell me about this Anything-AA-Service [XaaS] ERP launched this year, Netsuite XAAS Edition. It seems to be intended for high-growth smes that are using Hybrid business modelsIncluding marketing and seling products and services toge. But we have heard similar things from Netsuite Before
What, did you talk to Zach nelson [a former chief executive officer of NetSuite]He Said Product Companies are Bopen Service Companies and Service Companies are Bopeuct Companies. Well, we like to read our own good message. We recycle as much as possible: it's our sustainability strategy!
He was very prescient about that, and you see it in a more recent generation of companies, especially over the past five years. Whoop is a good example – and a network customer. They have a health wearable that tracks all your activity.
“I'm really focused on the end result, on how the user benefits, and not as much on the 'Inseed Baseball' terminology”
Evan Goldberg, Oracle Netsuite
Their founder, Will ahmedIs a young entrepreneur. He started this company from the ground up, he thought of as pan-category, as a hybrid. He wants the consumer to have an apple-type experience. Apple is the prototypical ultimate hybrid company. They build incredible software, they have lots of services that they sell, and they do increaseable manufacturing. And i think that's the model for young entrepreneurs right now: “How do I become the apple of X,
This next generation of entrepreneurs do not think in traditional categories. These companies like what that make a wearable, they have accessories, they have a service, and you have to buy the service to use the product, the product is not useful all the use.
It's all your fault [as journalists] beCause you guys communicate so effectively on the values of selling subscriptions and “as a service” that I think everybody, every business, is like, “I Need to right to that.” There's Nothing better than a recurring revenue stream to get the gift that keeps on giving.
Coming Back to Agentic AI, I've spoken to step miranda at racle about their Agent studio Product, Part of Fusion Applications. What do you see as the similarities and differences between Oracle here and Oracle Natsuite?
They've dive very deeply into agents. We work closely with their ai team. So, we're doing some things that are different, and we'll pass on our results to them and they'll pass on their results to us and hopefully we'll take the best of both. I think it's good that we're taking a bit of a different tack and then we can merge over the long run in terms of what makes sense to do in both places.
There is, Between Netsuite and Fusion, A Lot of Things that are very similar between a 5,000 person company and a 500 personana company, and then there's a lot of things that are different. We can do a better job in finding the things that are similar and collaborating. Steve Miranda and I Are Close.
So, there''s a lot of options there. It's just that obvorely we each have our own lists, and so sometimes that collaboration does not get the attention it should, but I certainly intended to do more time.
Is there anything analogous to agent studio at netsuite, which is primarily about the originalation of agents?
Not yet, but we looking closely at it. It is an interesting approach that they've taken and we are paying close attention to it. So, you might see something like that from us. But we've get to make sure that, for our users, it's not so highly technical.
Companies that use fusion have more resources, real experts who are alive to build some of this stuff, and our customers have an admin or maybe a small admin team that do lots of different things, so different things We're going to have to figure out.