Although hosted CRM applications are common, few vendors are extending the deployment option to back-office operations, with NetSuite Inc the best known of the back-office hosted operators. SAP has announced plans for a hosted SMB back-office suite but has yet to confirm a release date. Sage’s foray is modest by comparison because it is only making its entry-level small-business-oriented accounts package available online. Plans for other hosted offerings have not be released.
However, in addition to the cost, infrastructure, and access benefits of hosted deployments in general, other advantages of Sage 50 Accounts Professional Online 2007 are that it provides accountants and clients with shared access to data, contained within a system where the version is always the latest one, encompassing the latest legislation. Local support is an area where Sage with its regional business model could win out over NetSuite and other players that operate on an international basis and face the challenge of catering for local legislation and taxation rules.
The service is being made available in the UK through Sage partners that are part of the Sage Accountants Club and the price starts at 900 pounds per year, or 75 pounds per month, with clients required to sign up for a minimum of 12 months, although they can opt to pay on a monthly basis. Clients buy into three, five, or 10 named user contracts with additional users charged at 10 pounds per month.
With Sage providing the hosting infrastructure, the annual fee paid by the client is shared between Sage and the partner. This has potential for conflict, but Sage is adopting Microsoft-type line here, pointing out that partners can offer a range of value-added services on the back of the hosted service.
Although it said it is committed to offering customers choice and flexibility regarding the licensing and provisioning of its software products, Sage’s take-up of the hosted option is slow and disjointed, although perhaps no more so than that of SAP or Microsoft. Sage introduced a hosted CRM service at the end of 2005 but this operates separately from the hosted Line 50 offering in terms of contracts and technology.
