<p>There are plenty of precedents in the history of capitalism to suggest that a transformative technology marks the death of the old, and the rising of the new. Preconceptions and ways of working are swept aside, with new rules and methods taking centre stage. In particular, old operators, brands and standards are going to disappear but, it doesn't seem to be happening in quite the perfect, clearly-segmented way that our neatly-tabbed headings might imply.</p><p>I could be talking about a lot of companies or technologies but in this particular instance, I'm talking about Sage. Most of us know the company - long standing purveyors of accounts software, with near-monopolistic presence in the SMB sector in the UK, and global presence in other markets, Sage have even come to define a level of skill in book-keeping, with adverts for accounting staff demanding instant familiarity with the products and it's not just about the current version. Such is the relatively glacial turnover in accounting technology that five, or even ten-year-old installations are frequently encountered in SMB-land.</p><p>Sage doesn't fit into the hardcore IT person's definitions of software market sectors. In SMB-land this is because very often the IT presence isn't a member of staff, but rather an itinerant nerd, dropping in every so often to make sure things are on track. And as an outside supplier, they're not likely to be poking about in the accounts package at any deep level. Which is why, frequently, nerds are horrified by what they find. Sage has its own import/export based data backup infrastructure, encouraging non-IT skilled people to take their backups home, on an external hard disk or USB key and that format has other uses too, because it is far from uncommon for Sage to retrieve the entire accounting database after something's gone wrong, fix it back at base, and then redeliver the new fixed copy back to the business: data protection? What's that?</p><p>Such is the relatively glacial turnover in accounting technology that five, or even ten-year-old installations are frequently encountered in SMB-land</p><p><a href="http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/saas/accounting-and-financial/5423/sage-cloud-and-glacial-progress-accounting-software">Keep reading...</a></p>