Polaris Business Solutions

Acumatica 2017 R2 – Our Vote For The Top Five New Features

This month, Acumatica released the latest version of their award-winning ERP software.  Acumatica 2017 R2 comes with a host of new features and we have highlighted the five we find most interesting.

[…]

Say hello to Polaris Hosting!

Effective October 2017, Polaris has launched a hosting service for companies (and Polaris customers, of course!) seeking to run their ERP, accounting, or other business-critical software on a cloud-based platform. The hosting service – which is an alternative to businesses running and maintaining their own servers – offers advantages like improved security, improved reliability, increased server performance, and cost-savings. The new offering is a logical extension of our company’s core business of developing, deploying, maintaining, and troubleshooting software solutions from Microsoft Dynamics SL and Acumatica.

“We’ve been helping a wide range of clients manage their Dynamics SL- and Acumatica-based ERP, accounting, and other business software for over 10 years now, almost exclusively on their own servers or in homegrown data centers,” says our founder and president, Todd Delaney. “While there’s nothing inherently wrong with taking a DIY approach to running things on your own box, there can be considerable advantages to moving to the cloud. So, we’re excited to offer that as an option — and a broader service offering of both software and robust, remote servers to run it on.”

In launching Polaris Hosting, we’ve identified and expanded on three key benefits to businesses currently managing their own servers:

  • Lower “IT” costs – Information technology is oftentimes not a core competency of many businesses. By moving software and server management outside, businesses can reduce their “IT” costs or render them more predictable, eliminate headaches, and focus on their mainline business.
  • Scalability – Especially for smaller or growing businesses, needed server capacity, bandwidth, and speed can fluctuate and evolve, making it difficult (and costly) to predict and purchase the right hardware. By ‘leasing’ space in the cloud, servers can be added (or even scaled back) to stay in step with demand, web traffic, or common business fluctuations; companies reduce the risk of purchasing and maintaining equipment that can quickly become obsolete; and, with Polaris Hosting, customers can establish a ‘hybrid’ approach of in-house and cloud-based servers to migrate to the cloud gradually – or choose between a privately held or “public” server farm (such as Amazon or Microsoft Azure).
  • Superior security – In the face of ever-evolving security environment, Polaris’ hosting service increases confidence, thanks to added protection, automatic server software updates (no need to track and manage updates, patches, and upgrades in-house), robust back-up power, and well-defined/documented disaster recovery.

Current and prospective Polaris customers interested in learning more about the hosting services now available from Polaris Business Solutions can initiate a no-cost server audit, consultation, and estimate with a simple email.

Dynamics SL 2011 and Year-End Updates

If you are still running Dynamics SL 2011, you may be aware that Microsoft announced over a year ago that they did not intend on releasing any year-end updates for 2017.  The good news for users of SL 2011 that won’t have time to upgrade before year-end is that there is a third-party product available for purchase.

[…]

With Sage Acquiring Intacct – Why Are You Still Using Sage 100 (MAS 90)?

This week Sage Group announced that it has agreed to acquire Intacct Corporation – a 19-year-old cloud ERP vendor – for about $850 million.  This is the largest acquisition Sage has ever made and their third acquisition this year.

What prompted Sage to make this move?

Sage has been lagging behind the competition in moving to the cloud and generating a recurring revenue stream – which Wall Street loves.  Sage has also had difficulty in gaining mid-market cloud installs.  Analysist have said this acquisition was a necessary, but expensive way to address these issues.

Before the acquisition, Sage had three cloud products that are the focus of Sage’s new “Cloud First” policy:  Sage One (for very small businesses), Sage Live (for growing, but still small businesses), and Sage X3 (for larger enterprises).  Sage Intacct (as it will be called assuming the deal is finalized) will try to fit in-between Sage Live and Sage X3 and provide some needed North American cloud clients that Sage is desperately trying to add.  Intacct is primarily for US GAAP accounting, which could be an issue for companies with multinational needs.

Impact on Intacct

Acquisitions always create uncertainty, as the recent NetSuite acquisition showed, and this purchase is no different.  Certainly, Sage wasn’t just paying for Intacct’s customers, but also their technology and people as well.  But $850 million is a big price tag and Sage will have to find some efficiencies to keep shareholders happy.  Anyone familiar with Sage will know that they don’t have the best reputation for investing in technology.  Will the ability and desire to innovate Sage Intacct be diminished?  Will the pressure to increase dividends and show a return on this investment take precedence over innovation?  If you are considering a new ERP package are you willing to take that risk with Sage Intacct?

Impact on Sage 100 (MAS 90)

This acquisition by Sage has been big news this week and I have combed through dozens of articles discussing the details of the transaction and the impact it will have on Sage’s product strategy.  There have been plenty of mentions of Sage One, Sage Live and Sage X3.  But, I haven’t seen any mentions of Sage 100 (formerly known as MAS 90).

Are you still using Sage 100?  If so, why?

The product has been around for decades and has plenty of accounting functions – that can’t be denied.  As a former reseller of Sage 100 I know what it can do.  I also know what it can’t do.  The technology has always been behind the competition, even other legacy ERP packages like Dynamics SL.   It was my experience as a partner of Sage that improving the technology was secondary to getting new clients.  Sage continues to provide a roadmap for the Sage 100 product and is still updating modules to the “new business” framework – something they started around 2005, but you must wonder where does Sage 100 fit in the priorities now that Sage Intacct is in the family.

How does Sage 100 fit into the “Cloud First” priority?  How many accounting packages can Sage support?  How long does Sage want to support Sage 100?  How many partners have stopped supporting Sage 100 and moved to a different package and how would that impact you?

Acumatica

I was one of those partners that dropped Sage 100 and added Acumatica.  It wasn’t an easy decision, but in the long run, it looks like the right one.  Acumatica has recently announced a Sage 100 migration tool.  Acumatica is built on the latest technology and continues to innovate and Acumatica is a true global product.  Now seems like the perfect time to review Acumatica if you are looking for a new ERP package or if you are still using Sage 100.

 

Acumatica 6.1 Now Available

In January, Acumatica has released the latest version – 6.1  It includes several new enhancements and bug fixes.  Some of the enhancements are detailed below:

[…]

Dynamics SL 2015 CU2 Released

Recently Microsoft has released Dynamics SL 2015 CU2 (Cumulative Update).  This is mostly a collection of bug fixes, but it does include support for some additional Microsoft products.

[…]

10 Years

I am incredibly grateful and excited to announce that Polaris Business Solutions is celebrating its 10th anniversary this February.  A decade is a long time, especially for a small business in the tech world.  Obviously we could not have been successful without the great and loyal customers we have been fortunate to work with over the years – some have been with us since the beginning.  It has also been a privilege to work very closely with several of our vendors towards our mutual goals.  And as any small business owner will tell you, they can’t succeed without their friends and family by their side – to help you through the lows and to celebrate the highs.

I am happy to say we are close to making some big announcements over for the next year that I believe will better help Polaris provide you with the high level of Dynamics SL and Acumatica support that you have come to expect from us over the years.  The ERP world is changing fast and we are excited about the changes and opportunities to come.

Thank you for the 10 years of support, I feel fortunate to be able to do what I love to do.  As we take the next steps towards another 10 years, we hope you will come along for the ride.

Sincerely,

Todd Delaney

 

Acumatica Summit 2017 Day Two Recap

The second full day of the 2017 Acumatica Summit was full of demos to show where Acumatica is headed.  The capabilities that Acumatica was able to demonstrate today included some things I don’t think we will ever see in a legacy ERP system. We will dig into some of these in future posts as the functionality becomes available for general release, but here are some of the highlights:

[…]

Acumatica Summit 2017 Day One Recap

The first full day of the Acumatica Summit came to a close and provided partners and customers with a lot of big news and demos of some cool new features.  Here are some of the interesting items from the first day:

[…]

Acumatica 6 to Include Outlook Add-In

Acumatica’s Customer Management (CRM) suite has always been able to provide users with a complete view of their business.  As part of a full suite of integrated business management applications (ERP), users can easily share information between marketing, sales, service and finance because the data all exists in one database.  With the upcoming release Acumatica CRM has just gotten even better.

[…]