Is 'Sage' Wiser And Better Than 'Best'?
P.J. Jakovljevic - August 22, 2005

Event Summary

While, at the upper-end of the enterprise applications market, many will have been riveted by watching the inevitable intensifying global supremacy war between SAP and Oracle, it might be interesting to analyze the equivalent moves of the two superpowers at the (perhaps even more promising) lower-end of the market, also known as the small-to-medium enterprise (SME) market segment. One player would inevitably be Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS), following two major, well-publicized acquisitions in the early 2000s. On the other hand, the UK-based the Sage Group plc (LSE: SGE.L), one of the leading providers of business management software for SMEs worldwide, with total annual sales of over $1.2 billion (USD) and 4.4 million customers in fiscal 2004 and the only technology stock on the FTSE 100 index for the London Stock Exchange (LSE), has been rounding out, also by annexation, its currently largest SME geographic coverage...