Sage 100

4.5 Preview today - I sensed there was not that much excitement about it - I do not understand why sense Ebus is at business framework why they cannot go ahead and make the switch to SQL - looks CRM and SQL will talk to each other and CRM 7.0 not 7.1 will be in it.

Refresh my (our) memory. What are the HUGE pluses that this release is bringing to the scrap pile? Based on the lack of follow through on previous hype sessions, I have completed forgotten about which goodies are supposed to make me drool with this release.......................

There are a bunch of new features added for payroll users.

However of course this does not apply to SQL users.

Oh boy... Drool, Drool. Of course it isn't BF compliant so we could really make it zing. Any list of bug fixes. How about any ideas from the idea web site that weren't put there by Sage employees? Crappy day here in VA. About 70 with a chance of rain..........

Well they did say that version 4.5 is the last version extended solutions will be incorporated into the product. After that it will go to customer/partner suggestions.

I asked if Sage would create a sample BOI script for writing back to MAS from UPS and Fedex, but they ignored my question.

Or they didn't care.

Time was probably short.....................

Here are the slides from today's preview.

I thought it was funny that she was still sharing her screen and we could see all the questions she was ignoring - will we ever have a true dialogue with Sage where they at least answer the questions that were asked?

Well she did answer some questions when someone asked if their questions were being ignored.

This is probably a large part of the reason for merging versions -- they've hardly moved the needle on SAGECRM implementation (Prediction: This will move it about as far as ""throwing in FAS starter edition"" did for FAS adoption)

So on page 23 of Bill's pdf, v4.5 certification includes ""installing and implementing the 200 SQL version"". Any guesses on what this truly means? I have no clients with SQL needs. I have to get SQL certified now?????

Looks that way. I took both exams and I found them easy, but then again I passed Microsoft's SQL exam back in the day and have been working with SQL with MAS 500 and for clients who create mirror data to SQL for 90/200.

They slapped a bunch of ES's that were already written into the product. As I said years ago, they would just drip out extended solutions that they paid a few million for, on a product that grosses 60m/year in maintenence. Other than scraping SQL into the product (0 optimization in SQL Server), I see virtually no new code other than upgrading a few things to BF and testing. Anybody have a feel for the 4.6 game plan? Without hiring pvx programmers, they are running out of hats to pull a rabbit out of.

Along the same line - The PVXPlus taking over providex bothers me to some degree. I am curious what type of organization it is now? How many employees? etc. It bothers me that we have built a product around a guy whose years are numbered and then what will happen to the language and our product. in 10 years Sage will say it is now time to move to a different language - providex is going no where and then we will be spending our time changing our code all over again to get to a new platform and that will take another 12 years to transition.

Will MAS 90 and Providex have a shelf life of 10 years? I'm guessing that Sage is betting that it won't and that significant enhancements to the underlying program language are probably not worth the expense -- but I'm not a programmer so I could be totally off base.

I am betting they are going to find a way to keep it on the shelf unless there is a mass exodus - look at daceasy and some of their other products that are still around. Besides Sage MAS200 SQL - has there ever been an announcement of discontinuing a product from Sage?

MAS 200 Unix

Still bitter about Unix...

Good one on the Unix and the MAS200 SQL are the 2 discontinued products and now MAS200 SQL has been resurrected - Maybe there is hope for the Unix version in a few more years :) I still have an orphan client that I occasionally still work with on their MAS200 Unix system. They do not want to spend any money to upgrade still after all these years.

Rather than Unix, perhaps Linux is the new trend. I know people that use Ubuntu Linux and haven't gone back to Windows for their home computers.

I think the linux hypefest has peaked as the latest hypefest is 'cloud' (if you saw that rediculous sage video I posted yesterday). Not sure what the 'fad' after cloud coolaid is going to be...