Let's face facts. As Craig Bruya mentioned when I talked with him, the big Dynamics competitor is not SAP, not Oracle and not Intuit, it's Sage. He indicated that Microsoft was impressed with their business strategy and strong cash flow but felt that ultimately, it was a poor long term strategy. Apparently now, Sage agrees.
In my mind, Sage is where good products went to die a long slow lingering death. Sage's strategy was to buy products, make enhancements, but not dramatic improvements and live off the past lives of these products. They own everything from Peachtree to MAS500. By my count, I get 13 accounting systems, a host of related items (Timesheets, HRMS, Verticals, Fixed Assets) and 3 CRM products. But you can't start with Peachtree and work your way to MAS500. Every major step up in a company's growth required a company to reimplement with a new system. If I have to reimplement, I'm going to look at competitors. There's no lock in and no leveraging existing knowledge.
With MS now you can start with Office Accounting, upgrade to GP standard and then GP pro while leveraging the same data underpinnings (SQL Server), with a short learning curve and with relatively (as compared to a full implementation) painless upgrades.
Sage is now changing their strategy to try to offer a beginning to end product line. I think this is a good thing because it will allow for better apples to apples comparison for customers and it may push MS really match or outdo Sage feature for feature. All of that is good for us customers.
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