April 22nd, 2010 by Duane Jackson
I got lucky at the end of 2008 and got the chance to announce Sages entry to the UK SaaS accounting software market before they did. the luck continued with finding some serious security flaws that forced them to withdraw the product a month after launch.
Their new SaaS product which I’m dubbing “Son of SageLive” is due to be released in a matter of weeks. As I predicted, it’s a “back to the drawing board” jobbie, the problems with SageLive were too fundamental to be fixed.
So with one industry heavy weight about to enter the market, it seems another is close on their heels. Intuit have had an online version of QuickBooks available in the US for sometime, but it looks like they’re now about to launch in the UK.
Witness the following Tweets:
MadelineMcQueen - Found a great business online accounting tool http://www.kashflow.co.uk
(9:13 PM Apr 19th)shaawasmund - @MadelineMcQueen you want to check out Quickbooks – by far the best. We tested everything.
(9:26 AM Apr 20th)MadelineMcQueen - @shaawasmund Quickbooks on-line is not available in the UK, which is what we really need, it is in the US but no plans for release here.
(10:44 AM Apr 20th)shaawasmund – @MadelineMcQueen watch this space … honestly I know far more than what you read!
(11:14 AM Apr 20th)
Shaa Wasmund is a very well respected entrepreneur and founder of Smarta. If she says she knows something, she knows something.
But just to be certain that she is privvy to inside information:
DuaneJackson @shaawasmund KashFlow and Smarta should be working together
(13:00 PM Apr 22nd)shaawasmund @DuaneJackson hear good things about you … However we’re already hooked up with Intuit who are an awesome partner too.
(13:09 PM Apr 22nd)
So there you have it. Not quite as conclusive as seeing the actual product, but I’ll buy a hat and eat it if we don’t see a UK launch of QuickBooks online this year.
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Tags: intuit, Quickbooks, SaaS, Sage, SageLive
Posted in Cloud Computing / SaaS, Technology | 6 Comments »
July 6th, 2009 by Duane Jackson
Dennis Howlett blogged today that Sage may never get SaaS. Ultimately he offered the same proposed solution as I did back in May: that they should spin off a new company – seperate from the current management – specifically to work on the SaaS problems they face.
What I loved about the post though was the delicious irony of it all.
Sage buy software firms that have a good customer base but are essentially old, tired and over the hill with declining organic growth.
From Dennis’s analysis, Sage have become what they have acquired – old, tired and over the hill with declining organic growth.
With that in mind, I’ve devised them a new name and logo (above) which they’re welcome to use.
Tags: Accmanpro, Sage, SageLive
Posted in Cloud Computing / SaaS, Technology | 4 Comments »
May 21st, 2009 by Duane Jackson
Sage CEO Paul Walker recently told silicon.com:
In the back office accounting area, business solutions, we’re seeing very small, slow growth in terms of demand [for cloud computing]. We have a number of products that meet that demand that so far is relatively modest
It didn’t sound right to me at the time. Why spend 18 months developing Sage Live, (their software-as-a-service offering that later got pulled) if the demand for it is so small and their current product range meets that demand?
Motasim Najeeb, relatively new CTO for Sage North America, made some interesting comments at their Partner event in Nashville. He talked about making Sage products an alternative to cloud-based offerings like salesforce.com.
In the article linked to at the start of this post, Walker told Silicon:
in two or three years time I’d be very surprised if 50 to 60 per cent of our customers were on [cloud-based applications] but it could be more like 15 or 20 per cent
But Najeeb is quoted as saying that in three to five years Software-as-a-Service will probably surpass on-premise software. You can guess who I agree with.
Sage also seems to be some confused about what their soon-to-be-ex customers actually want. Walker talks about delivering more ”cloud computing” apps - which is a catch-all term that includes just delivering the same old software over the internet (not the same as “the web”) using remote access software. The ex Sage customers we and other SaaS accounting companies are picking up aren’t looking for cloud computing solutions. They specifically want true SaaS applications that will pass The Touring Test.
Sage say they’re meeting the existing demand from their customers. Here’s a quote from a direct message I received on Twitter today which is typical of the kind of thing we’re hearing all the time:
I’m historically Sage oriented but willing to look at online solutions as well and Sage’s offering is ****. Perhaps demo ?
The sender doesn’t want to be named as he still has a relationship with Sage. But needless to say he has now seen our software and it’s the only product he’s recommending to his clients for web-based accounting. He only came to us because Sage have nothing suitable – ie, they’re NOT meeting the demand.
It’s not only Sage resellers, consultant and accountants that are telling us Sage can’t fulfill their needs, but some of their bigger international commercial partners are too – more about that another time perhaps.
The demand from the Sage reseller channel for a SaaS app has been so great since the start of this year that we had to develop a reseller programme specifically to be able to capitalise on it. We don’t have anything online promoting it just yet, but it’s up, running and being used. (Contact Neil Ballard on 0800 848 8301 if you’re a reseller interested in this)
I made a post last year with the title Sage Prove They’re Both Worried and Clueless. The “clueless” in the title was about their lack of understanding of the ‘net and specifically social networks. Since then I’ve been really impressed with the way they are using Twitter to engage with clients. And now it seems Sage, in the US and the UK, are reaching out to industry commentators, like Ben Kepes, that really know their stuff.
I guess it takes a while for a juggernaut to change direction. But all the signs now are that Sage are (very) slowly moving in the right direction. Hopefully the CEO will listen to his CTO about the technology (the clue is in the T!) and we’ll see a viable product from them one day soon which will give a lift to the whole SaaS accounting industry.
As Sage seem to be soliciting opinions on their approach, here’s mine just in case anyone is still reading.
They seem to have two major problems:
To me the solution to both problems is pretty simple:
They need to get a new company up and running, owned and funded by Sage PLC (although I know a few VC’s who would happily pour money in) – give it a big fat budget and some good project managers and let it run independently.
Then recruit developers that are real web developers, not desktop developers. These people can’t be from within Sage - they need to be people that know the web but aren’t tainted by exposure to old-school software houses, their methodologies and blinkered approach. They need to build an app from the ground up using pure web technologies – PHP, .Net, Ruby, whatever.
The new company should be able to access Sage’s expertise on the accounting side of things – but not make use of ANY of their existing technology, code,database structures or concepts of how software should work. That last bit is so important. I can understand how tempting it must be to re-use code and database structures to save time and money. But that would be like a cancer in the new product. Don’t do it!
I reckon they could easily put together something good enough to take to market within 6 months.
From then on, they can revive what I suspect was part of the Sage Live game plan: release the app sooner rather than later and improve it based on feedback from actual users. Improve and release again ad infinitum (a web-app is rarely finished) and price it very aggressively.
Once the product is working well, let them tap in to the marketing machine that is Sage PLC as well as having their own budgets for online marketing.
If done correctly the new business will very quickly start taking customers away from it’s parent company. But these customers were going to be tempted away anyway – better for Sage that they leave for a Sage-owned subsidiary than elsewhere.
Or there’s always Option B. If Sage want to save some time and make a very serious web play that will keep them relevant to the fast changing market then they should just buy 37Signals. That’d shake things up a bit!
Tags: Cloud Computing, SaaS, Sage, SageLive
Posted in Cloud Computing / SaaS, Programming, Small Business, Technology | 8 Comments »
April 29th, 2009 by Duane Jackson
If you were reading this blog last year then you may remember Sage proving they were worried and clueless - worried about SaaS, and clueless about how a small firm like KashFlow can use the internet to get our story heard.
After we stole their thunder they reported us to Trading Standards over a pricing comparison on our site. Because of their aggressive approach towards us, when I then found security holes in their attempt at SaaS, Sage Live, I blogged about it instead of quietly telling them.
The combination of a flawed product and their bullying antics resulted in a torrent of bad PR, including Daniel Goldman (son of the late, great Sage founder David Goldman) writing on his blog that Sage should have kept schtum.
Well, today I’ve agreed a resolution with Newcastle Trading Standards. We agreed that it’d take considerable time and resources on my part to prove my case (reckon Sage knew that?) and the easiest thing is for us just to remove the comparison that they objected to so we can focus on growing the business. A bit of an anticlimax for those of you expecting blood and gore in the tornado I’m afraid.
Sage Live itself also seems to have been a huge anti-climax. Everyone in the SaaS accounting industry was excited about Sage entering the foray. But just as quickly as it arrived, it was taken offline to “as a precaution” after my post about their security issues. Their line to the media has been that it’ll be back as soon as the issues are fixed. That was 3 months ago. I’ve been hearing on the grapevine that the problems are so fundamental that it’ll never be back – not in anything like it’s former guise anyway. As if to confirm those rumours, I’ve had recruitment agencies in touch this week touting CVs of developers and sales people that worked on the Sage Live project.
It would seem that when it comes to Sage and the Cloud – they’re in an Egpytian river. Paul Walker, their CEO, yesterday told silicon.com:
In the back office accounting area, business solutions, we’re seeing very small, slow growth in terms of demand [for cloud computing]. We have a number of products that meet that demand that so far is relatively modest.
He did go on to make some more positive noises, but I don’t think he realises what’s going on in the industry right now, today. Not in 3 – 5 years.
It seems Sage are really tightening their belts at the moment with a round of redundancies being offered. Not surprising you’d think given the recession. But we’re recruiting and so are at least 4 other SaaS accounting companies that I know.
Two other contrasting bits of news recently: Salesforce.com, the darling of the SaaS industry, recently passed $1bn in revenue. Whilst Microsoft, the grandaddy of installed-software, have reported their first year-on-year fall in revenue for 23 years.
I read once that the short-term impact of new technology is often overestimated (hence the dot com bubble), whilst the long-term impact is usually underestimated. I’m inclined to agree.
Thanks to @10Yetis for the heads-up on the silicon.com article
Tags: Microsoft, Recession, SaaS, Sage, SageLive
Posted in Cloud Computing / SaaS, Technology | No Comments »
January 28th, 2009 by Duane Jackson
It looks like Sages new web-based accounting application has lived out its short life via this blog.
First we announced its existence (which they then confirmed to Accounting Web), then pointed out it was crap anyway (which other more independent people then agreed with), then we pointed out serious security concerns with it.
Russ McRee got in touch to say the security issues were worse than I’d reported. Russ has some heavy weight credentials behind him and the professionalism that comes with the huge amount of experience he has in this field. So he’s been in touch with Sage to try to get them to address the issues we’ve both uncovered.
They finally got back to him in the past 24 hours. This evening Sage sent out an email saying:
Sage Live is in open Beta, which means that it is still being tested, and it’s a real first for us so we’re passionate about getting it right for our customers.
This may mean that, from time to time, we have to make changes to the site in response to your valuable feedback. Where required, this may mean that we have to take the site down for a while so we can work on it, and this is what has happened on this occasion.
You don’t take a SaaS product offline for an extended period just to apply a couple of updates. So it looks like they’re taking the security concerns seriously.
And good on them. It’s the right thing to do. I was concerned they’d be more worried about losing face than losing customer data and just bury their head in the sand.
By taking it offline to address the issues they are not just conceding that they cocked up, but they’re showing they’re not willing to jeopardise their clients data.
It looks like Sage Live is dead for now. I hope that when it comes back, it’ll be a better product than it was in its first incarnation.
UPDATE: Sage have confirmed to Accountancy Age that it was indeed taken offline due to security issues.
Tags: SaaS, Sage, SageLive
Posted in Cloud Computing / SaaS, Technology | 4 Comments »
January 21st, 2009 by Duane Jackson
Seeing as my wife is spending most of the evening on Facebook complaining about being kicked from the inside by our unborn second daughter, I thought I’d spend the evening online poking around Sages new online offering – Sage Live. I’ve already had a play with the functionality and reported my thoughts on that. This time I was interested in the technology and security side of things.
A couple of years ago selling web-based software to SMEs was hard. Everyone was concerned about security. Over the years, it’s been accepted that us SaaS providers seem to know what we’re doing. We’ve built up a lot of trust.
Sage seems to be aware that securty is important. They have a few pages about security that all say the right things. But in reality they fail on the most basic security measures. There’s no point in sticking your servers with Rackspace and shouting about how great the security is if the end-users password isn’t protected. After all, that’s all that is needed to get into a Sage Live account.
Defaults to “Remember me”
The default option on the Sage Live homepage is for it to remember your username and password. You can untick it if you like, but you’ll have to remember to untick it every time you log in. Other wise, all someone needs to do is fire up your computer, put in the url and click the Login button. Your password is already there!
Password shown in clear text
I really had to struggle to stop myself adding 3 exclamation marks to that sub-heading. Almost unbelievably, they show your password on-screen when you log-in – in plain text.
It’s sent to their central “passport” servce using a GET rather than a POST – so your password is actually in the requested URL which is displayed in the status bar. See the circled red area in my screen grab below. (click to enlarge)
Make sure noone is looking at your screen when you log in.
Obsolete technology
A little bit of paying around on the web site indicates that the whole thing is powered by a product called BEA Aqualogic. BEA were acquired by Oracle in April last year and the BEA Aqualogic range of products have been discontinued. So before the product even made it in to public beta, the underlying technology was obsolete. This is why the pure-play SaaS companies develop their own stuff from the ground up.
[Edit: Whoops, factual error. As pointed out by a reader below; the link above doesn't actually say that this product is being discontinued]
Waiting for the Feds!
I’m allowing myself the luxury of an exclamation mark for this sub-heading. A little bit of prodding around the site and I found myself looking at these two pages (click to enlarge)
I know one of them says I only have read-only access. But these are undoubtedly pages that only authorised people should be seeing.
It’s at this point I realised that if I went any further then I could possibly fall foul of all sorts of laws about unauthorised access to remote computer systems. I started to worry that the FBI would be knocking on the door any minute (only half-joking – some of the Sage servers are in the US) and decided I’d better leave well alone.
The security blurb on their site says they have some sort of intrusion detection system that should have locked me out. I think someone might have forgot to put the batteries in it.
Conclusion
Myself and the head honchos at other SaaS accounting firms have been waiting a while for Sage to make a play in the SaaS market. We were pleased when they did. Even the fact that their product was pants didn’t matter. By just getting involved in SaaS, Sage have added credibility to the whole concept.
Now I’m wondering if we’ve all been a bit short sighted. A high-profile security cock-up could set us back years. By the looks of things, Sage are more likley to have a security problem than any of the proper SaaS players. That makes sense. Programming for the internet is a totally different thing to programmig for the desktop. Whilst Sage undoubtedly have years of experience building robust desktop apps, how much experience do they have in building for the web?
UPDATE: Sage took Sage Live offline on 28Tth Jan ‘09 due to these security issues.
Tags: SaaS, Sage, SageLive, Security
Posted in Cloud Computing / SaaS, Technology, Uncategorized | 21 Comments »
January 13th, 2009 by Duane Jackson
In my post a couple of months ago revealing Sages poor attempt at SaaS, I said that one of the senior guys at Sage had said he’d been told not to talk to me as there were “issues between Sage and KashFlow”. I had no idea what he was talking about so didn’t give it much further thought.
Now it all becomes clear.
A week after my first post about Sage Live, Sage wrote to their local Trading Standards office in Newcastle to make a complaint about KashFlow. Their complaint is essentially that our pricing comparison page is unfair in that it compares our product to TAS Books 3. I’m not in the business of promoting competitors products. There are some great products out there that I’m never going to mention on our main website (you know who you are!) because I don’t want my potential customers to know about them. So we asked our customers what products they’d considered before buying KashFlow. TAS Books 3 and the other products listed on that page were the ones most often mentioned – so I think we’re fully justified in providing the comparison.
I’d had a bit of back and forth with a “Solicitor” at Sage ( I don’t see any point naming her, she’s just doing her job). She asked for a few changes. We implemented them because they were fair requests and politely and respectfully made. I told them I didn’t agree to removing TAS Books from the comparison table and she said they “reserved [their] right to take further action”
Regardless of whether our comparison is unfair or not – I think this is a really stupid move by Sage. I know from our logs that they’re regularly checking us out and I’ve had this confirmed informally by people at Sage. So surely they must have known I’d scream and shout about this to make sure as many people as possible knew about it.
Shortly before MYOB withdrew from the UK market, their top man in the UK emailed our support desk to threaten legal action. This resulted in a press release from us (come on, you know you’d have done the same!). It didn’t get much pick up because a lot of the publications that would normally carry that kind of story didn’t want to lose advertising revenue. But Sage would have seen it and seen how we responded to it. By taking the approach they have, they are reinforcing the general view of them amongst SMEs as bullies. And of course it’s in my interest to promote this view of them. The recent thread on UKBF is not the kind of thing I’d want to see if I was in charge of PR at Sage. AccManPro, the best read UK SaaS accounting blog, has also picked up on it.
Whilst talking about Sage (again!) – It’s been recently reported that I’ve had offers of >£10m to sell KashFlow. This led on to quite a few people getting in touch to ask if I’d been talking to Sage about selling up. I just want to make it clear – to avoid any doubt and quell any rumours – that I am not and never have been in dialogue with Sage about the possibility of them buying KashFlow.
I’m quite happy to sit back and watch them self-destruct over the whole SaaS revolution. They’ve made their own in-house play, and it’s appalling. For anyone that thinks that’s just a biased view – try it yourself now at www.sagelive.co.uk. Or if you don’t have 20 minutes to spare to set it all up, look at the comments on my blog about it. Ben Kepes, independent blogger on all things cloud, describes it as “pretty horrendous”.
By taking this stance against us they’re telling the world they’re worried about SaaS. The way they’ve gone about it shows they’re clueless about the power the web gives to the little guy.
A bit of free advice for you Mr Walker: Less solicitors, more web developers.
Tags: SaaS, Sage, SageLive
Posted in Cloud Computing / SaaS, Technology | 4 Comments »
December 20th, 2008 by Duane Jackson
I’m very conscious that this is becoming a blog about Sage rather than a blog about my own company, KashFlow. But hey, they’re the industry leaders, we’re taking away their SME customers in droves and they’re now getting into the software-as-a-service side of things (or at least trying to) . They’re likely to be the subject of lots of comment over the coming weeks, so no apologies from me on that score.
Sage Live, the existence and imminent release of which was first announced on this very blog, became available for public beta testing at the end of last week. See www.sagelive.co.uk if you want to have a play. The site confirms my reported price of £10 per month per user which was later talked down by Sage themselves when speaking to John Stokdyk at AccountingWeb.
A few others have had one-on-one demos from Sage. Dennis Howlett has a lot of intersting stuff to say on both the market issues and the product itself.
Ben Kepes at Cloud Ave commented that “Sage should be applauded for their braveness. Introducing a product with limited functionality and obvious functional holes is an impressive feat for a big company normally totally risk averse”
Having now had the time to sit down and play with the software myself (without the development team watching this time!), I was seriously disappointed in it. I didn’t have very high expectations to start with, but it failed to reach even those. I can ofcourse be accused of being a little bit biased. So I’ll let someone else have their say.
Dave Poole is an accountant with Williams Lester (not one of the 100’s of firms that are members of our Partner Programme for accountants or someone we’ve ever had contact with before anyone claims it’s a put-up job!) He read my comment on a business forum that said the software was dire so decided to take a look himself:
Well, you said it was dire….but I didn’t expect it to be that poor, I was ready to throw the laptop out the window after 15 minutes of fighting with the Sage Live Billing, and I have to say, I am a huge fan of Sage products normally. This is definitely one I will be avoiding.
It’s just fundamentally flawed. Look at KashFlow, or any of the other web-based accounting products. In the main they’re intuitive and easy to use. Some use really flash technology – but the technology doesn’t get in the way of the software. People who use KashFlow use it because it’s easy to use; the fact it’s web-based is incidental.
SageLive uses some kind of virtual dekstop/workspace and you have windows within that. The whole drag and drop concept for the different elements within the software is nice from a technology standpoint. But it’s just not suited for this kind of app. I already have my desktop within my operating system. And that contains it’s own windows. Why do I want a window on my desktop that contains a desktop full of windows?
Getting anything done is a slow and laborious process. There are too many clicks involved for even the most simple of tasks. Even launching the software itself is much more involved than just logging in.
Tom McClelland of payroll software company 12Pay said on the forum mentioned above
It has all the hallmarks of being designed by graphic designers and web programming experts as opposed to people who actually think about what the processes involved in day to day use are. Very pretty and full of smart web tech, but not actually usable, I’m afraid.
I couldn’t agree more. There are other issues with it. Some elements aren’t encrypted (http:// instead of https://) which results in a load of security warnings. A lot of the buttons can’t be seen on my little VAIO laptop (1280×800 resolution). They’re outside the viewable area and there’s no scroll bar to get to them. It also keeps freezing on me. I’m sure these niggles will be resolved before it comes out of Beta testing mode. But it wont be enough to save it.
I’m sure there are some accountants and advisors out there who still haven’t looked at web-based accounting yet. The offering from Sage may be the first they look at. I hope they then go on to look at other offerings too because if they thought this as the standard of what’s available then it could put them off the whole concept of web-based accounting.
I’d be a liar if I said I was originally not at all concerned about what the product would do to KashFlows dominant position in the UK web-based accounting market. But having now seen what’s on offer I certainly wont be losing any sleep over it.
The competitors we’ll be up against and watching closely in 2009 will be the other small innovative startups, not this christmas turkey from the incumbent vendor.
UPDATE: Sage took Sage Live offline on 28Tth Jan ‘09 due to security issues I found and posted here on 21st Jan.
Tags: SaaS, Sage, SageLive
Posted in Accounting, Cloud Computing / SaaS, Technology | 4 Comments »
November 28th, 2008 by Duane Jackson
After beating Sage 50 and Quickbooks Pro to the top business software industry award with our rapidly growing online accounting software I said that someone at Sage needs to grow some cojones and make a move into the software-as-a-service market. Well, it seems they’ve been quietly working away on their new web-based accounting package for the past 18 months and will be launching it to the public in January 2009.
After a hectic day I managed to get down to Olympia for the last hour or so of the Business Startup Exhibition. Just before I left I went over to the Sage stand to take a look at their latest marketing materials.
On a laptop tucked away in a quite corner I spied a program running in a web browser with the title “SageLive Beta”. I got chatting to the guy demonstrating it (without saying who I am). He confirmed it’s their newest product, in development for 18 months and due for release in January. Until now they’ve tried to keep it under wraps. I commented that it seemed to be a new approach for Sage to develop a product from scratch rather than acquire an existing company. They were obviously very proud of what they’d achieved and rightly so.
It’s totally different to anything I’ve ever seen from them before. It’s all in AJAX (posting to a Sage 50 database as the backend) and has a very nice interface. If it wasn’t for the Sage name in the top right-corner you’d be forgiven for mistaking it for the work of a cutting-edge Israeli start up.
I asked how it compared to other online accounting software, the first words out of his mouth were “Like KashFlow?”. I tried to hide my grin and asked if they saw KashFlow as their main competitor for the new product to which he said yes. I though it best to come clean so I said “Good to hear!” and handed over my business card.
I found out the guy I was talking to was Duncan Hawes, Development Manager for Sage Live. Duncan said he’s been meaning to come and talk to me but had been told by his higher-ups that he wasn’t allowed to as there were “issues” between our two companies. I’ve no idea what that’s about. The only direct contact I’ve ever had with them was a fairly friendly email exchange with one of their lawyers (if such a thing is possible). It was nothing like the less than amicable exchange we had with MYOB at the start of the year.
Duncan and his marketing colleague, Michael Barber, also confessed to being regular readers of this blog and to having opened KashFlow accounts under pseudonyms to keep an eye on us. All very flattering. “Enough of the ego-trip”, I hear you shouting, “Just tell us what you know.”
As I said above, it’s been in development for 18 months with a January ‘09 launch planned. It’s been developed in-house in the UK. It’s going to cost £10 per month per user with free support provided via a live web chat system. They don’t have an API yet but they “are planning to”.
Apparently there is also a Blackberry optimised interface so you can log in on the move.
There seems to be some neat integration with Google Apps and GMail. As you’d expect there is integration with Sage-owned payment processor ProTX as well as PayPal. I wonder if they’ll knock us off our perch as the only accounting software in the world that has Certified Integration status with PayPal.
It all sounds good, right? Duncan and his team have certainly put a lot of effort into it an they should be proud of what they’ve achieved. But unfortunately it soon betrays itself as a typical Sage product.
I had a bit of a play with it (I asked if I could be a beta tester but they declined) and generally felt it was a vast improvement on anything else I’ve seen from them. One of the first things I try with a new accounting product is to create an invoice. I couldn’t quickly work out how to with SageLive - it’s definitely lacking the intuitiveness of KashFlow and other web-based apps. It suffers from the same problem as all of Sages products – it’s obviously designed by people that have never run a small business. It looks really good and it sounds really good, but a scratch of the surface shows it simply doesn’t deliver the goods.
So, does it worry me? It’s priced very aggressively and Sage have the marketing budget and channels to really push it. Duncan assured me the whole board are fully behind the product, so I’m sure we’ll hear lots more about it.
But there are the usual problems with Sage software as mentioned above. Plus there is a lot of anti-Sage sentiment out there from small business owners (who have wasted time and money on unsuitable software) and accountants (who see Sage as a bit of a bully). All things considered, I think it can only be a good thing for us at KashFlow and the emerging SaaS industry as a whole. It shows that Sage accept that there is unsuppressable demand from business owners for web-based accounting software. Every penny they spend on marketing their new baby will help to raise the profile of all SaaS offerings. Maybe we should ask them to get involved with Cloud Computing Day on 12th Dec!
Something Duncan said really illustrated the way the industry is going as well as the arrogance that is natural at an industry leading company. I told him that in January we’d be releasing a quick way to migrate data from Sage’s product range to KashFlow. He said “It seems all the other products have a migration path from us to them, but we’ve never been asked to provide migration from their products to ours”. It was said as if it was something to be proud of. To me it just shows what direction all the punters are headed in.
UPDATE: Sage took Sage Live offline on 28th Jan ‘09 due to security issues I found and posted here on 21st Jan.
Tags: SaaS, Sage, SageLive
Posted in Accounting, Cloud Computing / SaaS, Technology | 19 Comments »
