Sage ventures into financial services with £184m US deal

From your reply it would seem as though the Sage foray into eCommerce was an abject failure. Moreover to indicate that the product was so far short of an acceptable standard that it was completely unfixable is a fairly damning indictment of any software house (let alone a market leader?)

Surely there were only two possibilities when the original software was released:

a. They knew the software was completely unacceptable and released it anyway - questionable practice

b. They were unaware of its short-comings & failures and released in ignorance - incompetence

Either way you have a major software house that displayed astounding levels of un-awareness

What's more these same guys have already stated that they will not adopt the SaaS approach, but almost in the same breath have acquired a payment provider, which is traditionally linked to eCommerce; an area we have already agreed was a disaster for Sage

I would have to disagree with your final Para about the acquisition being 'perfect sense'. If the client wishes to run eCommerce they should be using a proper integrated solution and not disparate systems that require manual intervention to make them work - why is the market accepting such nonsense at the convenience of the software house (and being charged for it)?

(taking & retaining credit card number etc may be convenient but has major security implications and should not be encouraged for business without the specialist knowledge to implement the process)

Using WorldPay is fairly simple and I could post example ASP.NET code (post & call-back) to do it for free - if anyone is interested. All you then need to do is register with WorldPay & include it into your own site

This raises the issue of liability - any member of the profession who recommends a non-integrated solution (i.e. Sage) with the knowledge that their client wishes to use eCommerce is on dangerous ground. Such a recommendation could be construed as being negligent (duty of care) by failing to provide the best solution to their client.

Can anyone recall what happened to the Sage eCommerce offering a few years ago.

Presumably it is no longer part of the Sage portfolio.

If it was dumped (outsourced to another provider) by Sage what was the reasoning behind that decision?

Possibly they were unable to cope with an internet eCommerce solution; in which case does this engender any confidence with Sage and the internet?

I can see the rationale behind this purchase but I am struggling to see how it will work when we already have PayPal and WorldPay as independent services that can be hooked to any website. It looks like another case of Sage seeking to lock-in its customers - which is fine - except that it is NOT the direction the overall market is moving in.

Paul - might I suggest you consider taking a peek at some of the polemic things I have to say. I've posted these same comments elsewhere on AccWEB when responding to David Carter's 2006 predictions.