Sage has just released this four page “What’s New in MAS 90 and MAS 200 4.4” brochure. The document is a high level overview of the enhancements to the desktop, increased customer number (20 characters) and inventory item numbers (30 characters) as well as other important enhancements to MAS 90 and MAS 200 that will appear when version 4.4 ships in February 2010.
Archives for January 2010
Former Microsoft VP, Robert Deshaies To Lead Sage Construction and Specialized Business
Sage North America just announced that Robert Deshaies, a former VP who helped developed the partner strategy for Microsoft and also worked on their SaaS strategies as well as managing field operations for MS Dynamics.
Robert Deshaies is the second Microsoft executive to join Sage in the last year. Tom Miller joined Sage in June 2009 as their Vice President – North American Channel Management after having spent a combined 17 years at Great Plains and Microsoft.
In February 2009 Sage made permanent the appointment of Jodi Uecker-Rust as the President of Sage Business Solutions. Jodi herself was widely known as Doug Burgum’s second in command for many years at Great Plans and subsequently Microsoft when they acquired Great plains.
Deshaies appears to replace Himanshu Palsule who is still very much at Sage (I can vouch for that personally as he’s here at President’s Circle in Arizona as is Robert Deshaies).
While there’s no title given for Himanshu’s new position, he was recently the only Sage North America executive featured on the Sage ERP X3 webcast live from Paris France. Perhaps an announcement is pending on his new role and title.
The move to hire talent from the Great Plains / Microsoft pool is certainly a positive one for Sage. Great Plains had long been respected for their strong commitment to their sales channel as well as unrelenting focus on customer support.
The full press release follows:
Sage Organizational Announcement
Introducing Robert Deshaies, EVP SBS
Dear Sage Business Partner,
I am pleased to announce the appointment of Robert Deshaies as executive vice president, Sage Business Solutions. Robert will lead our Construction and Real Estate Business as well as our group of Specialized Solutions businesses (Sage FAS Fixed Assets, Employer Solutions, and the Value product families). He will also assume the interim day-to-day general manager’s responsibilities for our Construction and Real Estate (CRE) business until a new leader is hired, after which he will continue to provide oversight.
Robert brings more than 20 years of industry experience to Sage. Most recently, he was with Microsoft as vice president of the U.S. Partner Group, accountable for partner strategy, group management, business development, marketing, and sales. He has also led sales, marketing, and services for Microsoft’s eastern region, including all products and partner channels. Before working at Microsoft, Robert gained extensive experience and knowledge in business software with State of the Art, Solomon, and Great Plains in product management, sales, marketing, consulting services, and general management. As such he brings a very strong understanding of the industry and business to Sage.
Please join me, too, in thanking Himanshu Palsule, who has been providing executive leadership to the Specialized Solutions team, while also leading our divisional business strategy. This change will enable Himanshu to focus 100 percent on our business strategy to insure we have industry-competitive solutions today and into the future. With more than 12 years at Sage and over 20 years in our industry, we are fortunate to have Himanshu’s focused leadership in this critically important area of product and marketing strategy.
We have a great opportunity before us and I believe these announcements will accelerate our position in the industry.
Thank you for your ongoing support and commitment,
Jodi Uecker-Rust
President, Sage Business Solutions
Sage North America
SDATA: Sage’s “Secret Sauce” In Communicating Between ERP Systems and The Web?
Through the years most ERP companies have grown through acquisition.
From humble single product beginnings we’ve seen many companies including Sage North America evolve from a relatively tiny one product company called State of The Art which evolved to a company named Best Software then Sage Software then ultimately Sage North America or simply Sage.
As software companies grow and add products with different code bases the single most difficult issue is making each product share data. Acquired products have different core programming code as well as sometimes incompatible data dictionaries.
A common issue is how to link product A whose customer numbers can be 15 characters with product B whose customer numbers might only be 5.
For example the Sage Extended Enterprise is made up of at least three different products: Sage MAS200 + SageCRM + Sage FAS. Through the magic of programming, and brute force, Sage gets all three products to work together and exchange data.
But what if there was a standard that was simple and didn’t require extensive custom programming to enable communication between different products. This is where Sage’s open sourced SDATA protocols and SDATA extensions might come into play.
Stephen Smith, Chief Architect Sage Software, has done a great job of sharing some details of Sage’s SDATA protocols. Stephen’s job (from his LinkedIn profile) is:
Work on defining the architecture and technology direction for the Sage Accpac ERP line of accounting products. Leading the effort to modernize Accpac into a state of the art web based ERP package. Developing a shared Sage technology platform to bring together a number of Sage products into a unified end to end package with Accounting, CRM, HRMS and other vertical solutions; all sharing a common look and feel as nice user friendly web based applications.
According to Stephen’s blog posts (read the full post here) SDATA is a major new feature of Accpac 6.0:
One of the big features in Accpac 6 is SData support. What is SData? SData is a web services protocol based on REST. What is REST? REST is a web services protocol that is very popular among Internet companies. There are basically two main competing standards for web services. One is SOAP which is promoted by Microsoft, Oracle and IBM; this is a fairly heavy duty protocol which requires a fair bit of infrastructure (which is provided by the companies promoting this protocol). The other is REST which was invented as a University Research project and basically uses existing Web Technologies such as HTTP and RSS to implement a web services protocol. The nice thing about REST is that it doesn’t require any extra middleware. You are basically doing everything via standard web URLs. The infrastructure that supports this is basically just the standard Internet. SData is just an extension to REST, similar to Google’s GData which is also based on REST. REST protocols are used by Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo and all the main Internet companies. Gartner estimates that 75% of web services in use on the Internet are REST based. REST/SData also provides a standard mechanism for performing CRUD (create, read, update, delete) on all records.
While it may be too early to know how widespread the adoption of SDATA will be within all of Sage’s products, Sage certainly appears to be making a major push for it’s use. Sage ACCPAC is one of the ERP products (Sage ERP X3 is the other) that Sage has stated will be marketed worldwide.
I’ll be asking Sage where we can expect SDATA technology to appear next. For now it’s seems like an exciting addition to the Accpac 6.x product and will enable significantly greater interaction between different applications as Stephen explains:
All the new Sage ERP Accpac 6 screens are written entirely using SData. This means the screen can access any Accpac Views via SData, but additionally they can access any SData feeds from any product. In Accpac 5.x, the screen controls were mapped via datasource controls to views and view fields. This was great, but it limited you to only connecting our standard controls to fields in Views developed in our SDK. Now that the controls are mapped to a standards based SData fields, it means they will be able to be connected easily to much more data than just Accapc data. Look for other Sage products to start providing SData interfaces in their coming versions.
Read more about SDATA on the Sage SDATA web site or visit Stephen Smith’s blog via Geni Whitehouse – Even A Nerd Twitter Stream
Sage Offers Free One Day Consulting Skills Workshops In Locations Nationwide
Sage has just unleashed a free gift on their partner community that may be one of the most valuable sessions you ever attend.
Ed Kless, Sage’s Senior Director of Partner Development, is bringing a one day consulting skills workshop to seven locations near you between now and April 20.
Hopefully by now you’ve attended one of Ed’s classes. If not – take a peek at some video from IT Alliance where he teaches as well.
Why Should You Attend Ed’s Class?
- Because you disagree with his stance on pricing
- Because you agree with his stance on pricing
- Because you want to network with other proactive consultants and learn
- Because you hate boring canned presentations (No two of Ed’s classes are alike – but they’re all tremendously helpful)
- You enjoy classes where nearly the entire group participates
- You enjoy learning from other consultants and implementing their best practices – while sharing your own
Who Should Avoid Ed’s Classes
- Anyone planning on leaving the consulting business soon
- Anyone who thinks that what they’ve been doing the last 20 years is going to last into the next 5
- Any of my competitors in Connecticut
To register:
Login (create an account if needed) at http://www.sageu.com
Click “Academies and Boot Camps” on the left
Click “Mid Market ERP”
The list of Consulting Skills Workshops should appear (PDC103)
I’ll be attending the New York City session (Affinia Manhattan) on April 6, 2010.
See you there!
FRX SP 11 for MAS 90 and MAS 200 Available For Download
Been looking for the FRX Service Pack 11 for MAS90 and MAS200?
Consultant Alan Niergarth found it right on Microsoft’s own site.
This 52.5 MB download patches FRX for numerous program issues. Although the “whats fixed” doesn’t mention any fixes for Windows 7 compatibility, at least one site claims that FRX Service Update 11 enables FRX to work with Windows 7. Check the What’s New for details.
While Microsoft has this patch available for MAS 90 and MAS 200 users we must point out that Sage has apparently not yet tested it. So install it at your own risk though at least one person says that “it didn’t blow my system up” when they installed it.
YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary). Consult your Sage Business Partner prior to installing – that is unless you are a Sage Business Partner which in that case consult yourself.
- 1
- 2
- 3
- …
- 5
- Next Page »
You must be logged in to post a comment.