General Consultant Discussion

Interesting take on Sage ERP MAS 90 Online from the folks at Intacct. I cannot dispute anything they say though their argument is based largely on the belief that SaaS is better in every situation and is what the bulk of companies are looking to buy. While that may be partly true I think the depth of features in MAS can readily trump Intacct in situations such as wholesale and even manufacturing. If it were me on the Intacct side I would have thrown in an extra helping of ""oh and this SaaS doesn't even offer all the modules, requires that the VAR downloads and manually converts data and then uploads it to the remote server""...

Ouch!

My cloud is better than your cloud. Nah nah nah boo boo

I commented on this on LinkedIn. Their points are well-made but they sound like complete assholes making them so ... MISSION: NOT ACCOMPLISHED.

@PeterWolf No comment...argh...

There are also several other issues with MAS90 Online that were not touched on in this article: 1. Only framework modules 2. No VI 3. No Custom Office/Scripting 4. No native Crystal (*) 5. No native upgrade ability (*) 6. No link to SageCRM 7. No SMI 8. No enhancements 9. No credit card processing 10. No eBusiness The real sweet spot for this product is in small users since Sage will sell this in as small as one single user (minimum commitment of a year).

Sorry - the (*) means that limited functionality is available but you must perform some or all of it offline. With respect to upgrades I believe Sage told me that you must perform the upgrade offline on a local set of MAS data and then upload converted data to the site. I'm going to ask Sage for clarification on how that happens since it doesn't sound right.

Here's the pre-release guide which I cannot find in the PFC but I think was linked to from an earlier Sage email newsletter to the channel.

We are in the process of developing a whitepaper on the difference between our MAS Online product and Sage's that is politically correct and points out when the Sage product is appropriate and when ours is. It should be available and marketed before month end.

@GaryFeldman Do you know if I have it correct that in order to upgrade the partner will need to download and then re-upload converted MAS data under the Sage ERP MAS 90 Online service?

I think you are correct. It was my understanding that they will provide the server in parallel for the migration but you would perform the service locally and then upload data to the new server as each environment is restricted to one server per customer