Change is inevitable!
In technology and in life the goalposts are always moving, it could be as a direct result of internal dynamics or greater external forces.
Since we launched our first product ‘Titan ASP.Net for Sage CRM’ 6 years ago, the development world has changed quite dramatically.
Major external changes include the following:
- IE – no more the dominant browser
- Multiple Operating systems to contend with…
- Ongoing advances in mobile technology with new devices entering the market every year.
Sage CRM has been our primary focus as a development partner, the changes within Sage effect every piece of development we release
e.g.
- The move towards Java since version 7
- The move away from .Net API and ASP COM objects
In light of all these external changes, we have reviewed our own product offering and will implement the following changes in our development tools.
- Titan ASP..Net for Sage CRM code will be open sourced on github as of April 2014.
- The reasoning behind this change, is that we believe the Sage CRM community needs a platform they can take ownership of, and extend or contribute as and when it is needed.
- Our first open source project ‘Io for sage CRM’ will also move to github and so provide a front and back end platform for Sage CRM development.
We use and will continue to use Titan and Io for our advanced Sage CRM development, our existing product suite is built on these very platforms.
*We will continue to provide support for our customers who have Titan support contracts.*
Next up the focus is on our pro
duct suite
Accelerator for Sage CRM
Our Word Integration whilst conceptually a great idea (people love the demo) in practice it is little used. In removing this, we will not be supporting it from the Accelerator 4.0 release and it will not be available to download from the system.
The IE toolbar will continue to support mail merge with word
An optional add-on for Accelerator will be non-exchange based contact/Task and Appointment synchronization. This is in beta right now and undergoing internal testing. More details on this will be provided closer to release.
- This product is to be rebranded, there are no major product changes but it will now be presented as ‘Customer 365’ to better reflect its purpose. Customer 365 will be re-launched mid 2014
The next release due Q3 of 2014 will have improved installation. Crystal Manger is the only product on the market allow you to deliver Crystal Reports (CRM and ERP data) from within Sage CRM (native support for Crystal Reports was removed from v7.2)
On a technical note all our products will require the .net 4.0 framework to be used on the CRM app pool in IIS.
Generally speaking across the product range support for Sage CRM versions 6.x will be discontinued.
New Developments
Our new mobile interface for Sage CRM is a web app built on our own framework to work in all modern smart phones, Gmail, Firefox and Outlook.com. It will be a subscription based model that we will offer direct to market and through our tried and trusted Sage CRM partner channel.
We will also offer custom development on the platform, our first customer goes live this month. This is an exciting platform for us as it offers a hybrid cloud model where the customers data stays on their servers and the cloud hosts the web app.
More on this over the coming months as we roll out to our established channel…
Change can be scary and people generally will resist it, however to not change can remove fluidity from a company and stifle confidence in the scalability of work.
We hope that our partners and customers will approve of the changes we are implementing in our quest to provide superior products and services in this dynamic market place.
If you have any concerns or questions please don’t hesitate to contact us at sagecrm@crmtogether.com, we are always open to dialogue.
Marc Reidy
CEO – CRM Together