SOTA's Acuity won "Best Technology Integration" at Microsoft's Industry Solutions Awards Tuesday. Acuity had been chosen as one six finalists out of 35 entrants at a live competition which took place at the SoftEx Accounting and Finance trade show in Atlanta. The other five finalists included CODA Financials (the leading NT/SQL Server financial package in England), Geac Smartstream (formerly Dun & Bradstreet), Platinum Software (PSQL), Great Plains (GPSI), and Success Technology. The award is a significant confirmation that Acuity has the best technology for the mid-range financial market.
The other award given was for Best Functionality which was won by Platinum Software (PSQL). PSQL has had their Platinum SQL on the market for over three years and has more mature product than Acuity. The major loser in the competition was probably Great Plains. GPSI had won the Best Functionality award in January but only SOTA and Solomon were in the competition (SOTA also won Best Technology in January). Solomon was an entrant but was not chosen as a finalist.
PSQL and SOTA are really focused on two different approaches to the market. PSQL provides a good solution where a breadth of general accounting functionality is required. SOTA's Acuity was built from the ground up for ease-of-integration with other applications in a Microsoft NT/SQL Server environment. This includes both in-house developed applications and vertical market industry specific applications developed by third party independent software developers.
For example, Weyerhauser was able to integrate their in-house mission-critical applications with Acuity, migrate their data and be up and running live in under 70 days. With vertical partners, SOTA has the opportunity to participate in dozens of industry specific opportunities. This could lead to the kind of explosive growth SAP had in the higher end of the market.
None of the competitors have a product built for ease-of-integration. All of the competition developed their NT/SQL Server products from the code base of their own legacy products using their own proprietary developments tools. While this allows them to retain their full application, it does not take full advantage of the features in SQL Server and makes their products more difficult to add enhancements, custom modules or integrate with in-house or third-party applications.
Acuity was developed with Microsoft's Visual Basic (VB) 4.0 enabling Acuity customers to take advantage of the large base of three million Visual Basic programmers. Acuity is also a native implementation of Microsoft SQL Server which allows Acuity to have an efficient and consistent code base.
Having standardized on Microsoft technology and development tools, SOTA will also be able to quickly enhance Acuity by incorporating new technology from Microsoft. Acuity already utilizes VB 5.0 which features extensive internet connectivity. SOTA's internet strategy is to leverage the extensive internet support that Microsoft is building into all their technology. With this technology, Acuity applications can be launched from web browsers and financial reports and inquiries can be viewed from web browsers. Purchase orders and invoices can be sent via the internet.
Acuity is also the only financial application to be developed with Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) object-oriented methodology, all of the tasks in Acuity have been built as COM objects. These are language independent and allow developers to quickly build custom solutions from reusable software components whether from Microsoft, third-parties or in-house developed applications. For example, components of Microsoft Office can be seamlessly integrated into applications and components of any application integrated into any part of Office.
Early indications are that SOTA's vertical market partnering strategy is going to be very successful. One SOTA partner, a division of Lockheed, has a large warehouse management software business. (The U.S. Mail Service is a customer.) Lockheed is integrating Acuity as the core accounting with their software. Other partners will have offerings in hospital management and for medical clinics. Other vertical partnerships are likely to be announced by the end of the year. And each one brings its own distribution channel with them.
SOTA has also announced an important partnership with Proamics, the leading project accounting software on NT/SQL Server. Proamics will bring Acuity into service related industries where tracking the cost of a project is important. This is critical to such things as software development, media production, advertising, accounting, public relations, and any type of consulting such as engineering or architectural. Release 2.0, of Acuity tightly integrates the Proamics product with Acuity. Proamics previously had integrated their software with Platinum SQL.
High-end players such as PeopleSoft also want to enter the mid-range market because they see NT/SQL based applications as a new area of growth. But, the mid-range is a very different market than the high-end
This is the point made by Forrester analyst Bobby Cameron in a C/NET news.com article on January 17, 1997, "We think the market will go from large wholesale implementation and purchases to medium and small purchases and implementations that are less costly and time consuming."
Acuity's ease-of-integration means "implementations are less costly and time consuming." Try the Weyerhauser project with the likes of Oracle, PeopleSoft, or any of the other high end players. You would be looking at a year and up in implementation not to speak of millions of dollars of implementation costs.
NT/SQL Server technology has created a whole new market space for mid-range financial applications. The opportunity for both PSQL and SOTA will be huge. SOTA still needs to execute; but if they do, SOTA's shares are not going to stay at half the valuation of Great Plains or Platinum (or one-fifth the valuation of PeopleSoft). |
