Sage flogs North American Payments biz for $260m

Sage, pusher of the thrilling product that is accountancy software, has flogged its North American Payments business to private equity outfit GTCR for $260m (£202m). Back in December, the UK firm said it was evaluating “potential strategic options for the North American payments business", including a sale. The division, …

[John Smith 19]

Sage also bought Act! CRM and butchered that.

People complain Sage is not "glamours" but (whatever people may think) that's a substantial software business (in the North East of England as well) that does not depend on government contracts.

If they made more than they bought it for then they came out ahead.

Let's see what they do with this bag of cash.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sage also bought Act! CRM and butchered that.

Sage is not a 'substantial software business' in the North East....

Sage is a group of randomly acquired companies scattered around the world. The part in the North East of England is mostly a large call centre.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sage also bought Act! CRM and butchered that.

Don't disagree about it being a large collection of bought businesses but a fair bit of R&D occurs in the northeast. Especially for the UK specific accounting and payroll software.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sage also bought Act! CRM and butchered that.

They do build 50 and 200 but they're both a bit of a mess and I can't see them surviving indefinitely. Sage One doesn't have anywhere near as much of it's work done there as it used to. The focus is now going to be Salesforce anyway and I can't see that being done up in the North East.

[John Smith 19]

You forgot

IIRC several versions of their accounts software could not be upgraded to each other either.

About the only thing they shared was a number at the end, indicating roughly how many users the package could accommodate.

A little more detail on Act. It seems after the takeover they relocated the devs to another state. Not all of them came along. The result. An unpatched next release gave a DB with a few 100 records that could (literally) take 10s of seconds to go to the next record, even in physical record order. Pro tip. Make sure your version is fully up to date (I know, obvious really).