Anyone using SAGE DRIVE for their clients or their own practice?
What is your experience?
Thanks
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Just about to take the plunge
I have one client who is about to start using Sage drive. It's quite complicated to get it set up and then the user has to get an email sent to me. I haven't had my email yet. It's early days. I still can't fathom what the cost will be, as Sage's pricing structures as so opaque. The program is up to its 4th patch, so pity the poor souls who've been wrestling with it so far. I have a nasty feeling there will be lots of crashing for us early adopters, but perhaps that's very unfair.
I will be calling my account manager who is one of the most helpful people I know there to see what extra charges are involved. I assume these would only be levied on the owner of the data, but could be wrong.
Still needs a bit of work and a bit expensive
We have set up a client with it - lets just say that Sage needs to do a little more development work before it can be regarded as a reliable option.
in the nascent stages of using
We have two or three currents looking at using this. The first has just been setup and once you get around the plethora of different Sage ids needed for different things, it seems ok at first look.
Will be interested to read others' comments on this thread.
Oh Dear
JD has confirmed my suspicions. As usual the client is the unpaid beta tester.
I will tell prospective client no 2 to stay on the conventional version for the time being.
cost
My understanding is that, if a client has purchased either a perpetual or monthly subscription licence for the new Sage 50 accounts, then using SageDrive to share live data with a Sage Accountant is free.
I believe that adding the ability for the client themselves to access their data via SageDrive is £5 pcm per remote user.
Sage Drive – oh dear! ..
We already have SaaS, IaaS & PaaS etc – so welcome to the introduction of a new platform especially from Sage – CaaP – C*** as a Service
https://my.sage.co.uk/public/help/Sage-Drive/sage-drive-50.aspx
Quite frankly this is nothing more than the concept of an old fashioned client/server model that has been around for years – now re-badged under the Cloud Monika to con the user base into believing it is new and revolutionary. Although, perhaps for Sage something that is 40+ years old probably is revolutionary!
In fact Sage could have taken this approach many years ago, because whilst they call it Cloud it actually has few (if any) of the attributes normally associated with 'proper' Cloud (SaaS) (i.e. browser based, nothing on local pc, platform independent, multi-tenanted for app & data … and so on …)
The question is – why did they not introduce this client/server model 30 years ago because the technology was there?
The answer is – as the market leader they were under no threat of competition and palmed off any old rubbish onto their user base for years. In any event why spend good money enhancing their product (except the bare minimum to extract the period license fee from their customer base) when most were content with what they were given –
Furthermore, Sage had absolutely no intention of being an innovator; as demonstrated by missing the boat with ASL, SaaS for 10 years even when it was staring them in the face
Unfortunately with any ‘proper’ Cloud offerings (now generally recognised as the way forward for the future) Sage are now under pressure to deliver a new way of doing things – however, this requires a complete design/architecture revamp from the ground up; which they don’t have time to do or want to pay for
And by goodness watch them wriggle trying to avoid developing this new breed of software from scratch – hence extending the life of their legacy applications for as long as possible
‘.. Any changes you make will then synchronise through the cloud with your main site ..’ - Nevertheless synchronising (not real time) data is tricky at the best of times - which data is the latest & overwrites the other etc.
There still remain questions even on how they implement their client/server data updates and contention between the same record being updated by two (or more) different people at the same time in different locations. Which users record takes precedence if they are uploaded concurrently to their server data depository and is user of the ‘losing’ record (overwritten one) notified that their change has been discarded? - and if one introduces different time-zones into the equation so date/time stamps cannot be relied upon then what?
Now bearing in mind that Sage seemed unable to avoid the simple user 'lock-out' with logins on their desktop Sage L50 - who is going have confidence in anything they do - except to be assured of a swinging price tag attached and flakey software?
online v desktop
I think i read somewhere that this year it is expected that online accounts software eg Xero, Freeagent, Kashflow will outstrip desktop for the first time from the viewpoint of businesses using the software.
This has therefore prompted SAGE to try to catch up. Their first attempt at SAGEone was a failure as it is rubbish compared to Xero and the rest.
They have now tried to move SAGE 50 online via SAGEdrive.
SAGE has had it too good for too long with accountants being their sales agents.
However there is a lot of competition now so SAGE might not be the best for a client. Sometimes it might be SAGE, sometimes Xero, sometimes VTcashbook, sometimes simple excel. I will always recommend to a client what is best for their business.
Dont get me wrong I am a SAGE fan having been trained on it and used it for about 20 years. I even teach courses in it.
However I think that this is the start of the demise for SAGE and in 5 years time they will just be one of about a half a dozen accounts packages that people use rather than being the market leader.
Sage catch-up by acquisition …
@marks – the stupidity, blindness or lack of foresight displayed by Sage over the introduction of ASP, SaaS has now come back to haunt them - & quite rightly so!
Sage could have been in on the ground floor with Cloud based systems & provided early traction for the enitre market – they had the customer base, market presence etc. but they simply lacked innovation or vision – probably brought about by years of acquisitions in order to grow the business in the 1990’s; where buying an existing business was quicker & simpler than developing your own systems
Hence their portfolio resulted in a ‘hoch-poch’ of disparate 3rd party systems – none of which communicated with any other in any semblance of an integrated manner; so they set about tinkering with a great many of their acquisitions to bring them into line and along the way p*** off the original users of the products
But the stock market loved them & the share price soared – as a result Sage continued down that route
Having woken up to the fact that they missed the Cloud boat in 2007/9 they then delivered SageLive which was an unmitigated disaster because they failed to grasp the concept of security on the internet https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/topic/technology/sagelive-taken-line-security-flaws-exposed - don’t forget that SagePay was another acquisition by Sage after their original foray into being a payment provider had failed – so they bought one (payment provider) a few years later that was already working & re-badged it!
Can we see a pattern emerging here?
Therefore the way forward for this ‘marketing company’ (cannot be called a software house by any stretch of the imagination) is to revert to type and go the acquisition trail for Cloud based systems – simply to catch up with the market
Just wait and see - but in the meantime 'touch' and 'barge pole' springs to mind