SouthWare’s Underlying Technology

SouthWare was originally written in the Cobol programming language – the most widely used programming language in the world. In past years, I have generally considered the Cobol program language to be antiquated; however, improvements to Cobol in recent years has forced me to reconsider my position. You see, a few years ago, SouthWare used a San Diego, California-based technology called AccuCobol to re-compile the entire SouthWare product to produce a 32-bit, windows-based product. This is similar to what Best Software did years ago when they used ProvideX technology out of Canada to recompile MAS 90 from a 16-bit DOS-based product into a 32-bit windows-based product. In both cases, the product’s proven business logic remains primarily unchanged while the underlying technology is brought to date. The programmers at Best Software then re-worked all of their user screens over a number of years to give the product a fresher windows-based “look and feel”. The programmers at SouthWare were slower to rework their user screens because a large percentage of their customer base used dumb terminals and monochrome monitors which could not support a windows-based look and feel. At the time, SouthWare’s management made decision to keep the older screen designs rather then force their users to implement newer hardware to accommodate newer Windows-based screens. In 2003, SouthWare finally made the decision to upgrade it’s look and feel and the resulting screen design is representative of the new look and feel you can expect to see in SouthWare.

Even with the older look and feel, SouthWare is a 32-bit application that will run on virtually any database and any operating system platform in the world. Virtually no other accounting software company can make this claim. As examples, SouthWare has many customers running it’s products on the following databases: MS-SQL, Oracle, Informix, ISAM, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle and Sybase (for history files), Btrieve, C-ISAM, or any generic ODBC database. SouthWare Excellence Series also runs on virtually any operating system or platform such as UNIX, Linux, Windows, DOS, and even OS/400. This is a strong capability that should not be ignored when evaluating a product’s technology. All things being equal, I think that most people would prefer a product that provided such options. There is more to a product’s technology than just looks. Up until this year, SouthWare could be compared to a solid, dependable Cadillac that runs great and simply needs a new paint job – a good, dependable product underneath its’ rustic exterior. Now that SouthWare has updated the product’s look and feel, the product leap frogs up to a top ten product by any account. It has the good track record, proven product, 6,000 customers, wide breath of modules, deep features, good customization, profitable company, and good future outlook.

SouthWare enjoys a reputation for producing good solid code with fewer bugs. SouthWare’s product’s maturity, larger customer base, and positive feedback from customers’ resellers, and the CPA community support the premise that SouthWare deserves recognition as a top product. To keep a product stable and relatively bug free requires a consistent effort on the part of the publisher. Great Plains is legendary for compiling and testing its product nightly using 700 computers and 3,200 macros to produce 174,000+ reports that are electronically checked. There is no doubt that Great Plains sets the standard in this area. However many publishers seem to do very little to root out bugs and problems with the software.   In SouthWare’s case, a formal procedure is in place that seems to work well. The SouthWare code is compiled each week and programmers gather together each Monday to review the product testing results and bug reports received from dealers and end users. All bugs are documented and efforts are made to recreate the bug issue in house. Once identified the software bugs, if any, are prioritized and efforts are begun to solve these problems. As bug issues are resolved, SouthWare posts the bug fixes to their dealer web site and notifies all dealers accordingly. I am told by SouthWare’s management that some weeks there are no bugs identified and that in other weeks all bugs that are identified are typically resolved within 8 hours. It should be noted that software bugs are common place for every company – even Microsoft admitted about 4 years ago that there were more than 60,000 known bugs in Windows NT. With extreme stories like these it is easy to understand the importance of a consistent approach to identifying and handled these pesky problems.

SouthWare is lower priced than comparable systems. Additionally SouthWare will run on legacy hardware including dumb terminals and monochrome monitors. For these two reasons SouthWare is typically less expensive up front than other comparable products. However, the fact that SouthWare runs on legacy hardware often means  that on going maintenance is less expensive as well. This means that a company employing SouthWare will be more likely to utilize it’s current hardware should it choose to do so. Additionally, because SouthWare can operate in virtually any environment and atop virtually any database, companies are able to deploy the platforms and database solutions that best match their budget, needs, and personnel skills. It should be pointed out that in many cases, newer, faster computers can offer improved time savings significant enough to pay for themselves – the reader should take this into consideration.

Database - SouthWare runs on your choice of MS-SQL, Oracle, Informix, ISAM, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle and Sybase (for history files), Btrieve, C-ISAM, or any generic ODBC database database.

Source Code - SouthWare does not provide source code except in rare cases. For most situations, SouthWare's built-in customization tool set is sufficient to customize the product as needed.

Testing - The product is compiled and tested each week.

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