Every once in a while I write a little something about Sage's accounting products; "yes, I do realize they are 'the other guys' that have been around forever." Sage has announced that as of the 2014 release of Sage 50 (formerly known as 'Peachtree') that they will no longer support the two previous releases of the product, only the most current release. They are taking this action in an attempt to what sounds like 'twist the arms' of customers to enroll in their subscription plan for the software they call 'Sage Business Care'.
While saying they will 'no longer support' the prior releases, they actually will take almost 2-years to work through the releases covered under their prior policy, so products released as early as June of 2011 (release 2012) will continue to be supported through December 1, 2014, and the 2013 release (issued in May of 2012) will be supported through December 1, 2015. But the most current release 2014 issued in April of 2013 will only be supported through the end of this June (6/30/2014). You actually get 'longer support' if you are on the two older versions than the most current one.
I can 'hear the screams' as I write this, this 'blood letting' policy change will surely hurt a lot of loyal Sage 50 users who have made the every 2 or 3 year process of updating to the newest version a ritual. Obviously this policy is about 'economics', designed to increase revenues by forcing users to either update every year or enroll in the subscription model, while at the same time cutting costs through reducing the support requirements associated with roll-out of product updates to fix issues within older versions.
We (loyal QuickBooks users) can only hope that Intuit will not see this as an opportunity to change the 'sunset' policy regarding our beloved 'desktop' versions.