Try following the President of your company onto the podium.  It's never easy, but especially when you are charged with showing product features.   This presentation made by Craig Downing, VP of Product Management and Garry Nishimura, Senior Vice President of Research and Development rivaled that of Las Vegas pros Seigfried and Roy (to whom they made reference) both for it's professionalism and the excitement it generated.  When you hear a product person talking about marketing strategies, you know it's going to be a different kind of product presentation. 

The main message is that Advantage Series is the first pure web-based solution for the mid-market.  In addition, version 5.0 sports a slick new user interface, a layered design and all of the benefits of an object oriented architecture.  Customization capabilities have always been a feature of the ACCPAC product lines but the ability to quickly add or remove fields via a check box is a major improvement in the 5.0 version.

New project and job costing capabilities which will be released in January should give other vendors pause.  This first look provided estimating, time and billing, and contract maintenance capabilities that rival those of the industry leaders. 

As for the Pro Series product line, it has its share of excitement as well.  ACCPAC has done a great job of developing applications that work with both product lines.  The ACCPAC Manufacturing product has been added to the Pro Series product line.  Pro Series 7.0 has been released for the SQL version, with the Visual Fox Pro version to follow.  In version 7.0, the business logic has been isolated from the data base, making it easier to deploy across the web and on other devices.  

The eCRM product has received numerous accolades and has been re-priced to be more competitive.  In addition, a Sales Force Automation product will be introduced for up to 20 users at a lower price point.

ACCPAC is one of the few mid-market vendors that has announced support for the Linux operating system.  ACCPAC has been working with Linux since 1998, so it is no surprise that they have released a Linux version of the Advantage Series product which runs on an IBM DB/2 backend.  ACCPAC provides numerous choices for database options, with no change in the user interface. 

As Carlton mentioned, ACCPAC Exchange generated some buzz  as it provides an alternative to EDI without the complexity or price points of other solutions.  Like Biztalk from Microsoft, it promises to facilitate machine to machine communication.  Rather than compete with Biztalk, however, this solution can be used in conjunction with Biztalk, to provide connections to the accounting software. 

Improvements have also been made to the HR series, ACCPAC WMS, eCRM and the eTransact products.

Look out world, there is a new act in town.