Posts Tagged ‘sage 50 upgrade’

Sage 100 coming soon

Saturday, October 9th, 2010

Sage 100 has been in the works for so long that some might say that “coming soon” is part of the product name.  Nevertheless it looks as if the wait is really nearly over, with Sage 100 expected to be available around February next year.

Better still it seems that the wait will be worthwhile for those Sage 50 users who are happy with the features of Sage 50 but who are bumping up against its performance limits.  Sage 100 is expected to look and behave the same as Sage 50, but it will support more users and lots more transactions and other records.

Sage 100 isn’t expected to add features to Sage 50 though.  This means that Sage 50 users who’ve outgrown the features of Sage 50 will need to skip Sage 100 and look at upgrading straight to Sage 200.  Sage 100 is for Sage 50 users who just need a go faster stripe.

Although Sage 100 is expected to look the same, it is a largely new product.  The data will be stored in MySQL, a widely used open source database, and it is this which underpins the greater scalability and performance gains.  Sage 100 is being subjected to Sage’s now standard beta and pre launch process, which while not perfect has proven to be pleasingly robust in recent years.

And the name?  At least it provides a talking point.  And how could anyway confuse it with Sage Line 100;)

Sage 50 2010

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

Sage plan to release the next version of Sage 50 on 3 August 2009.  It will be called Sage 50 2010.

Full details aren’t available yet, but teaser information from Sage throws some light on the question of whether to upgrade.

Sage 50 (and it’s predecessors) have always tended towards steady rather than step changes, and it appears that Sage 50 2010 will conform to this pattern.  Sage highlight three areas of change, none of them radical:

  • Improved user experience (better processes, navigation and easier access to data)
  • A data import wizard
  • “Pay now” buttons on invoices, supported by SagePay, their service for collecting online credit card payments

Secondary areas for change include:

  • Support for legislation changes, particularly EC Sales List
  • Improved video tutorials
  • Barcode generation
  • Cash register

In summary, only a few users will regard Sage 50 2010 as a “must buy now” upgrade, but it is another steady step forward.  This then points to when.  The short answer for most people is not until at least September.  The cautious answer is not until the first service pack is released, which is likely to be later in the autumn.

One outstanding question is whether Sage 50 2010 marks the change to a commonly used database, rather than the current proprietary database.  There has been an expectation for some time that Sage will switch to MySQL.  This arguably won’t matter immediately to most users, but should improve access to information and in due course give performance and confidence benefits.  Certainly we’d expect it to allow us to offer better Sage support