Sage News and Discussion

Can anyone digest this to say whether it impacts the way Sage is building connected services? http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2011/11/the-long-term-failure-of-web-apis.html

Sounds like the issue Sage has had for the past eight years rolling out v4.X. We haven't spent a lot of time selling the software because every 18 months we are reinstalling MAS and updating old reports/methods/linkages so that they work with the newest version. Hard to sell when you are always ""fixing"". Connected services/extended solutions are impacted too. How many clients do we have that cannot upgrade until the MD has updaed their product? There is an active thread on DSD's multi-currency having a three month lead time.

The issue is that web APIs are not immune from change. When any web standard changes, it can have a small to profound effect upon applications and processes that use those standards to communicate. It is shortsighted to assume that web APIs wouldn't change. Sage's connected services that use web APIs to communicate, will be impacted as web standards change. Likewise any application that uses existing web APIs to communicate with Sage's software (like web services for MAS 90/200) will also be affected by those changes. Users and development must assume that changes will come and their software will be affected.

Some APIs have been very consistent historically - the Sage CRM APIs for example. Other APIs have a tendency to flutter in the wind. It's all part and parcel of the brave, new Internet world that we live in. Just like in the real world, the big boys call the shots. When Walmart tells you to submit orders using their EDI system, you do or don't work with them. Same thing if Facebook changes their APIs.