Sage Sketches In Roadmap To Common Components

Sage Software, which fields a sometimes-bewildering array of financial software brands is now prioritizing.

On Tuesday a Sage executive listed both its "strategic" products, those upon which it will base its future. And, she enumerated its "value" line which will be maintained but not much more.

The core strategic products are Act, Peachtree Accounting, AccPac, Sage CRM, Sage FAS (Fixed Asset Management), MAS, Saleslogix and Simply Accounting.

On the flip side are what partners are now calling maintenance products: They are: BusinessVision, BusinessWorks, PFW (once known as Platinum for Windows), Pro, and Timeslips.

Those offerings "will remain available for partners who want to sell them and customers who wish to buy them," said Nina Smith, president of Sage's newly formed Business Management Division.

"We will love these customers until they are ready to move to another Sage product." Smith said. Sage CEO Ron Verni and other execs addressed a few thousand Sage partners and customers gathered in Kissimmee, Fla., for the company's annual Insights conference.

Some partners have said that there is concern that Sage has not invested enough in future product development because resources were devoted to maintaining this fragmented code base.

The company did its best to allay those fears, saying it is moving to a "Common Sage Desktop" and will rationalize its line over time around key shared components, said Jim Foster, who had headed the company's midmarket business unit and is now chief technology officer (CTO).

The umbrella term for this work is Project 360, which will evolve into a detailed technology integration roadmap that will help Sage transition to common platforms, service-oriented architectures and software-as-a-service as needed, he said.

"Some businesses are still running on DOS and God bless them. We'll keep moving them forward but also produce a new generation of business process delivery," Foster said.

Toward that end Sage launched a North America Technology Office to work on a coherent road map including a software development lifecycle and the roadmap to those common components.

VARs liked hearing a proactive plan for the future, especially from a company known for so many legacy products.

Sharon Sinsky-Hopkins, vice president of Light Industries, a Millersville, Md.-based Sage partner, is glad the company talked up its roadmap plans and was bullish on the new technology office. "If you look at the messages out of Sage in the past, it has a lot of products and knows a lot, but it was also under fire for not following up on those investments."

Light Industries works with Sage CRM and Saleslogix.

Another partner agreed. "They really need to talk about products in maintenance differently than their go-to products,' said Jeffrey Roth, CEO of SWK Technologies, Livingston, N.J. SWK works with the MAS 90, 200, 500 lines, Sage CRM, and Abra.