NetSuite, the cloud ERP outfit, is aping Washington's "Cash for Clunkers" incentive program by offering any new customer who trade in its "Stone Age" legacy software a 10% discount on every $5,000 they spend on NetSuite.

The offer, good until the end of October, could see on-premise SAP, Microsoft and Sage software retired. Those are the brands NetSuite runs into the most.

In return, NetSuite's promising customers lower costs on software, hardware and energy.

An impact study by Greenspace found that the average NetSuite customer trims its electricity bill by $10,000 a year, leading NetSuite to reckon that it saved its customers more than $61 million in energy bills last year, eliminating the output of nearly 423,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

Asahi Kasei Spandex America figures it slashed its enterprise IT expenditures 30-fold. "We were spending 3% of our revenue on SAP. By switching to NetSuite, we reduced that cost to 0.1% of revenue," said David Stover, CFO of the company's Dorlastan Division.

TTI Instruments switched from Great Plains to NetSuite to eliminate paper invoices and says it's saving $6,000 a year. Schaeffer Manufacturing Company saves $100,000 a year with NetSuite on programming costs that would have been necessary to keep its AS/400 jalopy running.

NetSuite says the program will help more companies "do the right thing, turn off their polluting, cash-guzzling and ineffective on-premise enterprise solutions, and join the world of modern, efficient and powerful cloud computing."

The offer is good in the US, UK and Australia and will credit new customers $500 off every $5,000 worth of NetSuite purchased. That means A$500 off of every A$5,000 in Australia and £500 off of every £5,000 in the UK.

See http://www.netsuite.com/cashforclunkers.

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