Guild Companies

English software powerhouse Sage Group, the fifth largest ERP vendor in the world according to AMR Research, gave enterprise Linux a serious boost when it recently signed a partnership agreement with IBM to port its largest line of business software, Line 500, from Microsoft Windows to Linux and to run it on xSeries servers.

Sage, which sells its software to small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) around the world through a network of Sage offices and other subsidiaries, had based much of its software on the Windows platform. With Microsoft set to acquire Navision, Sage's primary competitor in the lucrative SME space, and gain a greater foothold in Europe, Sage's Linux move will help differentiate itself from Navision, which will no doubt be undergoing a .NET overhaul as soon as the acquisition is finalized. The situation looks a little more complicated when one considers that Sage announced its Linux plans in late April, two weeks before Microsoft announced its plans to acquire Navision. However, considering that Sage went to court in Europe last month to try to block Microsoft's Navision acquisition--or at least lodge its official complaint for the record with the European courts, which so far have been more apt to take action against Microsoft's monopoly--it would appear that Sage had some inkling of what was coming down the pike when it announced its Linux plans.

Line 500 is a suite of integrated applications that Sage Group targets at fast-growing medium-sized companies in the manufacturing, distribution, and business services industries. The suite consists of a total of 57 modules for the financials, distribution, and manufacturing functional areas. Up to this point, Sage has completely based Line 500 on Microsoft technologies, and the software has run only on the Windows NT and Windows 2000 operating systems, with a choice of database management systems from Oracle or Microsoft.

Details of the Linux announcement were difficult to come by (and deciphering the maze of Sage subsidiaries even tougher), but if published reports are accurate, Sage expects to begin delivering the Linux-enabled version of Line 500 towards the end of July. Sage said it will make Line 500 available "as an integrated package" on the xSeries along with SuSE's Linux Enterprise Server, which presumably means that Sage or its business partners will sell Line 500 preloaded on the xSeries. SuSE, of course, is now part of the United Linux consortium, along with Linux distributors Turbolinux, Caldera, and Conectiva. Sage said Line 500 will also run on SuSe's Linux for iSeries.

Perhaps as a parting remark intended to rankle Microsoft, Sage played up its support of Linux as a huge boost to the upstart open source version of Unix. "Linux is becoming very important to the business community, which is why we have taken the decision to support it," stated Graham Wylie, Sage UK's managing director. "Companies wanting to invest in a comprehensive yet cost-effective business software solution like Sage Line 500 will now be able to implement the new system without having to change their IT infrastructure, which can be expensive and time-consuming."

Sage said the deal will also allow all of IBM's network of business partners to gain accreditation to sell Line 500 to the midmarket, through joint programs such as new IBM/Sage one-day training seminars in the UK. (A public relations officer with Sage Group asked us to note in this story that the company's Linux agreement with IBM was made by Sage UK, the group's British subsidiary, although the effect of the agreement will be felt around the world.)

Sage Group, based in Newcastle, England, is a worldwide force in the SME software market. The group, which owns the ACT! and SalesLogix financial applications and which counts PeachTree and Best Software among its American subsidiaries, had 2.8 million global customers by the end of its 2001 fiscal year on September 30, 2001, and employs 5,000 people. For fiscal 2001, Sage Group had revenues of about $700 million, 45 percent of which came from its American operations, 32 percent from Britain, and 22 percent from France, Germany, and Switzerland. Sage Group's total 2001 application revenues put it right behind J.D. Edwards on AMR Research's list of the top five ERP vendors, which had SAP, Oracle, and PeopleSoft occupying the top three spaces, respectively.

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