He noted the company released a 2014 version and last month issued Sage Enterprise Intelligence for Sage 500 ERP and will connect the product to the Sage Data Cloud next year. But the best description probably comes from Doug Deane, CEO of reseller DSD Business Systems, who argues "Sage cannot predict when the end of life of Sage 500 will be, even if they keep it on life support for the next decade by adding connected services. The end of life of Sage 500 will be decided by Microsoft, when they stop keeping VB 6.0 compatible with future Windows releases." Once that occurs, the Sage product will be gone in a year or two, Deane postulates. He says resellers can wait around or find an alternative for client. The only way Sage can "postpone the inevitable" is to (1) rewrite it in a currently supported run-time or (2) acquire the rights to VB 6.0 and continue to develop it."
DEBATING SAGE 500'S FUTURE Featured
A debate about whether Sage 500 was ever slated to be put down keeps circulating through the reseller community. The prevailing wisdom is Sage waffled on questions about the product's viability and has been trying to put the cat back in the bag for the last two years. The official version came on a LinkedIn discussion group from product manager Tammo Stubbe who wrote "... the truth is that Sage has absolutely no plans to retire Sage 500 ERP in 2017".
