NetSuite is looking to pull customers away from rival software maker Salesforce.com by offering discounts of 50 per cent.
NetSuite - which is majority-owned by Oracle founder and billionaire Larry Ellison - is focusing the new marketing drive on pricing at a time when businesses are increasingly cutting back technology budgets.
The discounts are only targeted at Salesforce.com, whose customer relationship management (CRM) software helps sales staff manage their work.
NetSuite also sells other types of software, including accounting programs, and may expand the discounting to include other rivals and product areas, said NetSuite chief marketing officer David Downing.
"We are probably going to be launching similar salvos at some of our other competitors," he said. "In a bad economy, pricing plays a bigger role in decision making."
NetSuite will offer customers who dump Salesforce.com with up to 100 hours of professional services to help with tasks such as migrating to the new system and staff training.
Salesforce and NetSuite are among the most prominent business software makers that deliver their products as services over the web, using the same approach that Yahoo and Google have used to deliver email, maps, calendars and other programs to consumers.
AMR Research analyst Bruce Richardson said NetSuite's campaign is likely to generate some buzz, but that he is not convinced it will lead to many customer wins.