General Consultant Discussion

Product updates are a great classroom theory - however I think they work(ed) poorly in practice. 1. Customers don't want to install an update they can't test. Sage certainly has not , in my opinion, earned their trust regarding stability. 2. Pushing these out quarterly / semi-annually / etc - is way too confusing. Who remembers what was released in PU1, PU2, PU3, etc. It's damn near impossible to explain to a customer and to sit with them and think they'll listen as we go through 6 pages of product release features is insane. 3. Hot fixes are unavoidable - and to think that you can roll an urgent payroll fix into the next product update to avoid issuing separate patches is naive. So now you've forced customers or their partner to track both hot fixes/patches and product updates. I am very curious to see how Sage is going to continue adding value in upgrades. I don't think ""connecting"" third party / Sage services into MAS is going to add quite the value that Sage thinks. Customers see this as yet another sales pitch to buy some connected service -- unless of course the connection truly adds value such as credit cards seems to do for many. Are my customers really that keen on some third party integrations for credit reporting or e-marketing or even sales tax reporting?

You hit the nail on the head with this one, Wayne. Sage needs to get in gear quickly. They need to create smooth, seamless upgrades and they need to rev more often - not less often. Not only does this get the customer in the habit of upgrading - and staying on plan - it allows Sage to be more responsive to feature requests and drive features as well. I know you are suggesting that it's too confusing the way it's done now but it doesn't need to be that way. Today's software is revved early and often - that's by choice of the publisher but also in response to customer demands.

With the new Business Framework out of the way we should be able to have upgrades go through easier. At least until the next big upgrade (BBx => ProvideX, Character => Windows, Non-Busienss Framework => Business Framework, what ever is next). I am interested in seeing how they are going to deal with custom development. Developers should be creating their layer on top of the base. Sage core would always win then Developer code then end user scripts. I do not think a majority of all the developers are programming this way. They replace the code. Even if it just hooks out to their code they still use their copy of the program with a hook. This would mean that they will either break the modification when auto upgrading or they will not allow it and force you to manually upgrade if you have developer modifications.

What ever happened to the ""strict"" programming standards that MD's are supposed to be adhering to????

We still have a thick book of standards and things that we have to program towards. Doesn't mean that we can't work around issues that come up.

Some cases, Sage went overboard on Objects.