You should consider what Nicholas G Carr and the late Sumantra Ghoshal say or said about why these dinosaur ISVs don’t freely innovate in the cloud. Carr calls it ‘stakes in perpetuation”, Ghoshal called it ‘the 4Cs: Control, Contract, Constraint and Compliance’. This is YOUR opportunity and THEIR problem (Sage et al)!

http://www.kashflow.com/blog/sage-divided-over-saas/#tuppence

Although actually, they’re in a position to be THE global player in SaaS with a different strategy. But I suspect they wouldn’t have the balls to do it.

Hire a brand new team with a CTO who has developed SaaS apps successfully in the past!

>> It’s widely accepted that the SaaS model cannibalises the traditional revenue models these companies work to.

I used to think that, but given many are offering monthly pricing nowadays I’m not so sure.

What it does disrupt is their overall business model, which on the surface requires very little investment in R&D and innovation. A big upfront cost like we’ve both invested in our respective product development requires a move away from that model, sure, but is surely a no-brainer if they want to remain relevant.

Apparently not.

But upon reflection it’s not that odd. Sage is a services company. It’s their main strength. Most of their revenues are services and maintenance related, not software.

They probably don’t realise it themselves, but my conclusion was that SageOne isn’t a serious strategic play to transition their business apps to the cloud, it just a paid for SageCover contract that comes with free software.