Comments on: Sage's CEO fumbles the cloud ball

By: Why Sage may never get saas | AccMan

Why Sage may never get saas | AccMan — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 20:16:02 +0000

[...] Sage’s CEO fumbles the cloud ball (accmanpro.com) About This Post Posted by Dennis Howlett on Jul 5th, 2009 and filed under Featured, SAAS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response via following comment form or trackback to this entry from your site [...]

By: Duane Jackson

Duane Jackson — Fri, 01 May 2009 16:18:30 +0000

"Where I think that Sage have the whip hand is that accountants love ‘em." A lot of them don't - a lot of them intensely dislike Sage. Next time you're at our office, remind me to introduce you to Michelle who heads up our Partner Programme, she hears a very different story from the accountants she and her team talk to. I posted to my blog a couple of days ago and referenced the same silicon article http://blog.kashflow.com/2009/04/29/sage-multiple...

By: Dennis Howlett

Dennis Howlett — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:23:29 +0000

@dale: no-one's asking him to bet the farm but then I didn't exactly see the kinds of question I would expect on this topic. And I did put the link in to the original right at the top but thanks for repeating it

The s/w industry is beholden to its financial masters and fails to deliver to its customers. Cloud computing offers that possibility. The only reason Sage is dragging its heels, the same as MISO is because of the maintenance revenues aka the golden goose they dare not switch off. Other companies have proven it is possible to do make the switch while remaining profitable.

By: Dale Vile

Dale Vile — Fri, 01 May 2009 13:53:33 +0000

I think it is important to read the guy's words in the context of the questions that were put to him:
http://software.silicon.com/applications/0,390246…

Personally, I thought his responses were measured, responsible and very in tune with market reality. If he said he was betting the farm on cloud computing, particularly for back office functionality, I would be extremely worried about the future health of the company.

By: Jeremy Roche

Jeremy Roche — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 23:00:03 +0000

Accounting by CODA fully integrated with salesforce CRM, built native in salesforce tools and running alongside crm on salesforce.com servers. So I guess you can say they have accounting now Ian. See http://bit.ly/libIQ or www.coda2go.com.

By: Ian Gilyeat

Ian Gilyeat — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 16:28:55 +0000

Spot on. Some faulty thinking going on over at Sage. I called and spoke to an executive there to ask if they allow AccPac to integrate with Salesforce.com. The answer. No way – it's one of their biggest competitors. Hmmm… didn't know that Salesforce had an accounting package. Too bad because one of the two packages gets booted if you can't get the CRM and the accounting apps to play nice and share data and it's probably not the CRM platform…

By: Emily Coltman

Emily Coltman — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 14:23:34 +0000

Where I think that Sage have the whip hand is that accountants love 'em.

Lots of SME's buy accounting software based on what their accountants recommend – and, despite accountants like Jason Holden and Phil Richards having the gumption to swim against the tide and learn a new product, plenty of accountants have neither the time nor the inclination to do this.

So I do think Dennis is right. Sage aren't going anywhere. But it's not because of their product. It's because they've got a very firm grip on the accounting market.

By: Ben Kepes

Ben Kepes — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 06:41:47 +0000

Matt – I have to agree with Dennis here. Sage may be slow to move but they're bloody big and have a heap of resource behind them when they do move. It's plain wrong to write them off in the same way it's plain wrong to write Microsoft off…

By: Dennis Howlett

Dennis Howlett — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:17:52 +0000

Let's be careful we don't write off Sage. They have 5.8 mill users. They're not going away any time soon. The professionals are still important in this market and they're far from persuaded about the value prop. For those of us who think this is a done deal, we need be careful to remember that influencers need drawing into the fold as well.

By: Matt N

Matt N — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:11:59 +0000

Hi Dennis,

A great call out in your article. The Sage strategy is a continuous spiral of death for any software company who beleaguers the movement away from the desktop delivery. Their use of the 'Maintenance Revenue Stream' is an attempt to cover up the underlying issues of product/service innovation. Xerox claims the same positivitity about their maintenance revenue stream, called the Annuity Stream. Last ditch, last breath to a strategy-deprived organization overall.