Sage News and Discussion

Someone on LinkedIn has indicated Sage just announced that their Simply Accounting ""Solution Provider"" program is cancelled effective tomorrow. I have email into Sage PR to seek details. I don't know if in the Simply Accounting world whether Solution Provider is the same as reseller/VAR. Also remember Simply just hired Nancy Harris as VP and she is the only VP that I see on the website who has specific responsibility for effectively one product line. Sage JUST finished up (oddly named) their Simply Partnership week long conference in Vegas last week. http://goo.gl/c5fuD

This is confirmed. I have a call Monday at 11 with Jennifer Warawa to discuss.

Announcement

At least it is a 12 month notice for existing partners.

It's interesting that they are just pulling off the bandage and saying - ay-yup, you're going to the cloud. What about the tens of thousands of customers that are perfectly happy with Simply sitting on their desktop? Here's my thought (all speculation): You get a million customers that paid you $xxx for a product. Tell them - sorry folks, only cloud from now on for $yy per month or $12 * yy per year. You lose 20 - 25% of them but the annuity stream from the other 750,000 customers keeps you warm through the night.

I think from reading the sparse details that Sage's definition of cloud is hosted Citrix/Terminal server. The problem with that definition of cloud is that it's really only price competitive for really small businesses with zero IT. This is evidenced in Accpac's existing AccpacOnline which through Sage's admission is a 1 to 5 user average sale.

I think one of Sage's biggest Accpac customers is on Accpac Online.

That may be. According to Sage when I spoke to them at Summit (I think it was Erik Kaas) their market is actually around the 3 user site -- probably for reasons @GaryFeldman has brought up previously.

I was standing there with you. It was Erik.

I just spoke to Jennifer Warawa who manages this area (as well as Peachtree channel): - They have about 12,000 Sage Simply consultants - No comment on how many resold - but very small ""a handful"" - Their reselling program has only been around for about two years - Not enough sales to justify keeping it in place - Not announced as Simply Partnership because 99% of those attending were not reselling - Only one person directly laid off (unknown if anyone was re-assigned) - Absolutely no change planned for Peachtree channel - This was about removing the reselling which only a tiny portion of the 12k members were taking advantage of. - Also didn't announce at conference due to timing (probably employee layoff) I'm not totally buying the ""we weren't ready"" to announce. I think at the conference they had bigger fish to fry with the re-branding and didn't want to rock the boat so much that it might capsize. That's what I have