Sage 100

Does this type of acquisition mark the beginning of the end for material enhancements for SaaS products? What I mean by this is at some point adding new features to the core product was presumed to be part of what the user was paying for. Now it seems as if most material features are extra-cost add-ons that at one point might have been something a publisher built into their product at no added cost ( beyond the annual fee ).

I don't know. It is a valid observation, with TBD in our future.  Sage Connect is offered at no additional cost to the client. (not that it does much on it's own right now).  And we don't know if this new purchase will translate into a 'service' the client needs to buy.   

Does this type of acquisition mark the beginning of the end for material enhancements for SaaS products? What I mean by this is at some point adding new features to the core product was presumed to be part of what the user was paying for. Now it seems as if most material features are extra-cost add-ons that at one point might have been something a publisher built into their product at no added cost ( beyond the annual fee ).

I've thought this was the future for several years: specialized business operations capturing data first and feeding it seamlessly into the ERP Core. CRM, HRMS, FAS, AP Auto, credit card customer payments, etc. Those "feeder" applications must be must be more tuned to the specifics of the user's industry and specifics.

Expense mgt is intertwined with AP Automation because they both manage purchases/payments to vendors. I suspect the most successful ERP vendors will be those who have pretty good baseline services like FYLE, but also have robust API that can permit customers who have specialized needs to plug in a different Exp Mgt functionality. It is not yet clear to me if Sage 100 has an "API" robust enough to offer that choice to specialty customers.

I think this approach of enabling companies to plug in the best customer-facing apps/services that provide seamless data integration will produce the most value out of the system for a Sage 100 customer.

I don't know. It is a valid observation, with TBD in our future.  Sage Connect is offered at no additional cost to the client. (not that it does much on it's own right now).  And we don't know if this new purchase will translate into a 'service' the client needs to buy.   

Does this type of acquisition mark the beginning of the end for material enhancements for SaaS products? What I mean by this is at some point adding new features to the core product was presumed to be part of what the user was paying for. Now it seems as if most material features are extra-cost add-ons that at one point might have been something a publisher built into their product at no added cost ( beyond the annual fee ).