Sage To Partners: New Cloud Services Won't Leave You Behind

Sage North America is expanding into cloud computing with an on-demand version of its SalesLogix CRM application suite and plans to offer cloud-based ’connected services,’ modeled on Sage Payment Solutions, that extend the vendor’s on-premise applications.

But the software company is taking pains to reassure channel partners that its cloud foray won’t cut resellers out of the picture.

’We will ensure that you play a role,’ said Himanshu Palsule, executive vice president, in a keynote speech Tuesday at the company’s Insights partner conference in Denver. ’You will not be disintermediated by connected services. You cannot. Think about it. You still own the customer relationship.’

Sage executives, in fact, presented the announcements at Insights as a new business opportunity for solution providers, much as SAP did this week as it rolls out its Business ByDesign suite of on-demand applications.

’If you are a partner, this is a tremendous opportunity,’ said Tom Miller, Sage vice president of channel management, in an Insights keynote. ’You have the business knowledge. You have the business process knowledge. We see opportunity for you to add value to these connected services.’

With the new Sage SalesLogix Cloud CRM, targeted specifically at SMB customers, Sage will be competing head-to-head with Software-as-a-Service CRM applications from Microsoft, NetSuite and Salesforce.com, among others.

SalesLogix Cloud is built on the same code base as the on-premise version of SalesLogix and will be hosted as single-tenant instances for customers by Amazon Web Services, said Larry Ritter, senior vice president of Sage’s CRM product group. Sage will manage the application’s operations, including handling upgrades and application monitoring, while partners can work with customers to provide configuration, customization and integration services.

Sage is pricing SalesLogix Cloud at $65 per named user per month or $100 per month per concurrent user, with a minimum of five users. Current SalesLogix users can migrate to the cloud version for $35 per named user per month. The on-demand application will be available in North America in June and elsewhere in the world in the second half of the year.

Partners will earn margins based on the size of customer orders and can earn commissions for additional services, Ritter said. More than 50 Sage CRM Solutions business partners and value-added resellers have expanded their practices to include Sage SalesLogix Cloud during customer pilot phases.

Sage partners are already seeing demand for the SaaS SalesLogix service.

’So far we have three cloud SalesLogix opportunities and we have about three more in our pipeline. We are very excited about this as a delivery option,’ said Sam Biardo, CEO of Technology Advisors, a Des Plaines, Ill.-based solution provider.

’We currently have four installs of SalesLogix Cloud. I love it,’ agreed Anthony Castle of Castle CRM in New York.

NEXT: More Connected Services On Tap

Sometime in the future Sage will support hybrid SalesLogix deployments that combine on-premise and on-demand versions of the CRM application, Ritter said.

With the connected services, officially the Sage Connected Business Solutions, the company is pursuing a hybrid strategy similar to Microsoft’s ’Software Plus Services’ approach that use cloud services to extend the capabilities of on-premise software such as Sage’s ERP and CRM applications.

Sage Payment Solutions, an online payment system Sage acquired several years ago, integrates with Sage business applications such as the Peachtree accounting package and Sage MAS 90, 200 and 500 ERP application sets.

Palsule held that service up as a model for Sage’s plans to develop other connected services such as e-marketing, data protection, lead generation and employee benefit management.

The company debuted Sage Fundraising Online as the first within the new connected services line. Also in the works is a deal with the Hoovers online business data service to provide company data to on-premise Sage CRM applications.

Palsule said Sage’s cloud strategy is still in its early stages, but the company will be very selective about the cloud services it will offer. He also insisted the company has no intention of moving all of its applications to the cloud. ’We absolutely won’t do that,’ he said in his keynote.