Sage’s UK customers have been offered free data migration to the value of £5,000 if they dump the FTSE 100 software group and defect to Netsuite, which offers an exclusively web-based suite of business applications. The migration incentive will be available until the end of August.

‘Switching business software takes time and effort. We want to give businesses that are unhappy with their software the impetus to make that change,’ said Craig Sullivan, senior director of product management at Netsuite.

Netsuite is still in the process of establishing itself in the UK, but has already lured around a dozen Sage customers. The company is targeting the massive Sage customer base in the UK because it believes that there are large swathes of dissatisfied Sage users that it can lure over.

Sullivan said he was especially interested in winning the business of growing companies that had outgrown Sage’s Line 50 and had to make the switch to Line 100.

Sage has already countered such raids on its customer base by increasing investment in research and development and improving the integration of its products.