One result of that policy is that DacEasy, whose users were given an 18-month warning the product would be ended, is now being supported. However, the treatment of the package shows how aging software applications will be treated. In the last few years, Sage had ended production of Sage Pro and PFW after giving end-of-life notices.

"As long as we have customer paying for support contract, we will continue to support them," says Connie Certusi, the VP who heads the company's small business software operations. That means customers for DacEasy and products put in the same category will receive support and annual tax tables, but nothing else. New features will now be developed. And for getting users to fully support products, the strategy now will be to help customers move from older products.

"What we will do is simultaneously provide easier migration path from these products," she said.

Meanwhile, the company says its three global products are Sage One, the soon-to-be-introduced Sage Life and X3. Sage One had a rocky road in this country and has been re-introduced with new pricing and editions. X3 is targeted at the manufacturing market and sold through value-added resellers.

Sage Life, which will be available in August, has been the subject of a great deal of discussion as the company has publicly shown little but dashboards. However, the product combines front-office features such as CRM and back-office applications such as accounting.

Life will be available in both cloud and desktop versions. "That's a customer-choice model," says Certusi.

The product sits in the middle of the historic Sage 50 (Peachtree) market in terms of the size of company that is generally considered a target. Sage had generally described Peachtree as suited for companies slightly larger than those that typ ically use QuickBooks.