December blog posts tend to focus around two things, looking back at the year that’s passed and looking ahead at the year to come.

This one will do both.

For me, the last year -- and the nine before it -- focused on covering the market for enterprise applications where I worked as a reporter and editor at TechTarget. In 2013, I’ll continue to do that, only now I’ll be focusing a bit more closely on NetSuite and the cloud after signing on at NetSuite as a Content Development Writer/Editor.

My entries won’t necessarily be explaining NetSuite’s capabilities or new functionality. We’ve got plenty of capable people who can describe the benefit s of NetSuite. They’ve been doing it here and will continue to do so.

What I hope to do is continue to provide some insight into industry as a whole and how NetSuite fits in, share some stories about some of NetSuite’s interesting customers and add a little journalistic perspective.

And, in looking at the year ahead at NetSuite, I can’t help but be encouraged by a few recent news items. Zach Nelson, NetSuite’s CEO was named a Fortune Magazine Businessperson of the Year and one of CRN’s 25 Most Influential Executives of 2012. Strong, committed leadership always bodes well.

Meanwhile, over at Panorama Consulting, Eric Kimberling makes the case that Two Tier ERP is going mainstream, which is certainly a good sign for NetSuite’ Two Tier ERP program.

Finally, taking a look back at 2012, I take a measure of encouragement from a Chris Kanaracus story on the scariest software project horror stories of the year. Not all of the software systems are named, but those that were are all large, on-premise ERP implementations from the likes of SAP and Epicor, exactly the sort of thing NetSuite aims to replace.

We don’t need a Mayan oracle to tell us that 2013 is going to be an interesting year for ERP, CRM, eCommerce and the Cloud and therefore for NetSuite. I hope to follow it all right here on the blog.

Happy holidays.

-Barney Beal, Content Development Writer/Editor at NetSuite