Online readers will be able to access all the above presentations and see for themselves some of the information that was forthcoming. These presentations were made available by Sage to ISTUG and placed on the Members Club web site immediately after the conference.

There was lots of opportunity to question Sage management both in public and in private, some of the public debate was quite fierce and generally resolved there and then, with some very frank answers regarding either actions that had been taken or on policy for the future.

It can be seen from the above agenda there was quite a lot of interesting information forthcoming to give all attendees quite a lot to think about. It was also very interesting to see Sage being very open with their customers and giving them a good insight into what the business is trying to achieve, and where it wants to take the products it produces.

The forward view of product development would have been to many a significant opening up of what is likely to happen with the product range, it is of course the delivery that will be the true measure of this process.

New operating system Linux was once again given an airing, along with an insight into how this product is already in significant use. Many of us are already being supported on the internet by servers running under Linux, as are many other business critical applications. Sage is increasing its offerings on this operating system, it will be interesting to see how this grows in the future.

Did you know for instance that you may be able to get your Sage Systems Manager accredited by the same process that resellers need to get their staff accredited. This was one of the gems indicated by Andria Chaplin during her presentation about support.

The extent of support to companies that are multi-national was also quite a revelation, giving a good insight into how the language barriers can be recognised and broken down.

The independent user group ISTUG explained how its voice is now increasingly becoming the voice of all end users whether they know it or not. End users were encouraged to become members of the user group by both ISTUG and Sage. It is hoped that by this process end users will have an increasing say in the way the product evolves in the future with development being end user led rather than sales driven.