The gloves are off in North America as Sage Software responded to Microsoft's new Small Business Accounting (SBA) program with an even cheaper package, the $50 Simply Accounting Basic (SAB).
Our US sister site, AccountingWEB.com reported that Simply Accounting is claimed to be the top selling small business accounts package both in the US and Canada (a claim Intuit might contest). The new Basic edition is built on a Microsoft Access database, and like its big rival is said to offer tight integration with other Microsoft Office applications.
"For entry level businesses that want to migrate from a personal finance product or a spreadsheet, Simply Accounting Basic is the ideal accounting package," said Sage Software's Simply Accounting general manager Laurie Schultz. "With over two-thirds of all accounting software being purchased at the entry level, Sage Software is committed to serving this part of the market with Simply Accounting Basic."
The clash of the giants across the Atlantic has little immediate impact on the UK accounting software scene, but the battle does matter in the long term for potential users and resellers of both product families.
In this country, Sage has cemented its position in the marketplace (and in the FTSE 100) by becoming the dominant supplier of entry-level accounting software. In recent years, it has added mid-market ERP, customer relationship management and tax and practice tools to its portfolio. In most cases, selling these tools relies heavily on attracting users who are looking for add-ons to their Line 50 programs, or are ready to upgrade to products such as Sage MMS (formerly Line 100) and Line 200/500.
Microsoft lacks this readymade pool of potential clients for its business application software families, now marketed under the Dynamics banner. Microsoft highlighted market research from AMR this week that rated its business software as more popular than Oracle or SAP, but AccountingWEB's IT Zone surveys indicate that Microsoft has failed to put a dent in Sage's share of the UK mid-market since it entered the fray in 2001.
In the UK, the announcement of Microsoft SBA was received with a shrug of the shoulders by Dynamics resellers. With three main ERP families (Great Plains, Navision and Axapta) to choose from, along with Microsoft CRM and wider Microsoft technologies such as SQL Server, BizTalk and SharePoint to support, Microsoft resellers have more than enough on their plate to worry about besides SBA.
The entry level being targeted by the new low-end application - which is due to arrive in the UK towards the end of this year - is not a market that interests the resellers contacted by IT Zone.
John Stokdyk
