Proving that cloud computing has a promising future, US-based tech firm NetSuite revealed on Tuesday that it is on course to become the largest software company in the Philippines with its plans to scale up its current manpower base from 500 to 700 in the next few months.

NetSuite CEO Zach Nelson made the announcement during a press briefing at the Makati Shangri-la Hotel wherein he disclosed that company has started to expand its offices at the RCBC Plaza in Makati City.

“We’ll be the biggest software company in the Philippines — even bigger than Microsoft or SAP,” said Nelson, who was also in the country last year to personally check out the company’s progress here.

The NetSuite chief executive said about 10 percent of its employee headcount in the country is involved in software development, while the rest are in finance and back office support, professional services, and client management.

He said the 200 workers that the company would be adding will be distributed across the different divisions.

It was in 2009 that NetSuite, based out Silicon Valley, dramatically scaled up its internal business operations in the Philippines.

In the same year, it grew to nearly 300 employees in the Philippines. It then signed up local customers Jollibee, ABS-CBN, Yuchengco Group of Company (YGC), Far Eastern University, Ramcar Group, Herbs and Nature Corporation, Guevent Group of Companies, and Island Rose.

YGC’s inclusion as a customer was interesting since the company is closely related to Yuchengco-owned tech conglomerate IPVG, which is one of the local distributors of Salesforce.com, a competitor of NetSuite in the cloud computing space.

Last year, during Nelson’s first visit, the cloud computing firm also launched NetSuite OneWorld PH, a localized ERP software that features creditable withholding tax, VAT, reporting and BIR requirements.

The company said it rolled out a local version of OneWorld since the Philippines, as Nelson noted during the presscon, has perhaps “the most complicated” tax system in the world.

YGC was one of the early adopters of NetSuite OneWorld PH, using the online software to replace Microsoft Dynamics GP. YGC implemented Oracle at its corporate headquarters for the second tier of a two-tier ERP approach, while NetSuite OneWorld PH was rolled out in its 11 subsidiaries.

At the press event, NetSuite also bared that the details of Suite Academy, an educational program designed to bring cloud-based business management solutions to university classrooms.

Sixteen universities worldwide, including three from the Philippines, have adopted NetSuite as a component of their accounting degree curricula. The local schools are Map?a Institute of Technology, De La Salle University, and University of San Carlos in Cebu.

Also at the Makati event, Nelson said the company has made the move to make NetSuite a social actor by integrating a social media tool called “SuiteSocial” which is already available to local firms.

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