UK software leaders warned about American invader
Leading financial software companies including Sage and Pegasus have been warned of an IT invasion from US accountancy software house ACCPAC that could eat into their market share in the UK.
ACCPAC – a sub division of Computer Associates, one of the world’s biggest business software suppliers – is a US-based accounting software provider looking to expand across Europe.
It recently opened a European headquarters in Slough and revealed its plans for expansion in UK centred around the considerable backing of Computer Associates and the confidence it had in its e-business products.
However doubts remain over whether the company will be able to win over resellers from the leading companies as a number of companies have tried and failed in recent years including Exact of Holland.
Brian Forsyth, MD at Birmingham-based reseller Whitehead and Associates, said: ‘Sage has a terrific range of products and they offer customers reassurance through their strength and the amount of resources they plough into their technologies.
‘The market has become a lot more educated and they are looking for guarantees, which Sage can offer – they are going to be around for a while.’But for someone else to challenge Sage is very courageous and really rather foolish.’
BASDA chief executive Dennis Keeling, added: ‘This an extremely competitive market and it is going to be interesting to see if ACCPAC is successful in penetrating the resellers of the market leaders.’
However ACCPAC said it already had a list of users in the UK and pointed out it has 350,000 accountancy clients worldwide.
Cyrus Razzaghi, ACCPAC’s European regional manager, said: ‘We will target the small, medium and large company sectors.
‘We realise we face strong opposition in the UK but there are always opportunities which arise from mergers, acquisitions or holes in other companies products which we aim to exploit. We are extremely confident in our e-business offerings.’
ACCPAC product lines include Corporate Series, Small Business Series and e.Advantage Suite. Meanwhile ACCPAC is expected to go public on the New York stock exchange in the next 12 months.
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