MYOB users didn't want no steenking cloud Australian accounting software vendor MYOB* has released the newest version of its much-used small business bean-counting app. Sage fancied MYOB last year, but was beaten to an acquisition by Mitt Romney's old outfit, Bain Capital. The new release, AccountRight Live, lets users run their accounts on a PC or in the cloud. Or …
“We did surveys and focus groups with customers and their voice was overwhelming,” Reed said. “They wanted one single thing: they did not want us to change anything. Period.”
“Nothing at all. Zero. Zip.”
MYOB's networking is crap. You can't run over wireless and the slightest network error causes the entire system to crash. The datafiles are bloated and no real archiving to shrink them back down. The form designer is a total pain to use.
I can think of several things they could change
MYOB's operating system based native DB is extremely fast. Much faster than MS SQL, MySQL, Oracle, whatever.
Like all of that ilk, it doesn't scale very well, and it doesn't network very well.
The difference between SQL Server and Access/Jet has been compared to the difference between a Bus and a Ferrari: which one be faster to drive between SF and LA? Which one would move 30 people from SF to LA faster?
The SQL servers optimise memory management for multiple users by doing things like keeping the indexes in memory. The native DB system optimises for single users by doing things like discarding any index that is not in use.
I spent years moving people from Access/dBase/Foxpro to SQL. It's always slower. There is a lot you can do to get around that, and you have to because the raw performance is so much worse.
It is extremely average. The pc software is ancient relying on unstable pdf printer drivers and the online leave requesting software is slow, clunky and has had to be 'reset' i.e. completely re set up from scratch when one of their upgrades in the back ground caused a corruption.
It seems to me that cloud is synonymous with lowest common denominator, if you want the basics sold to a potentially huge customer base where everyone gets vanilla and no individual user matters, then its a perfect fit.
Article is slightly misleading, there is no web interface. You must install the full fat client on all machines you want to work with the data on.
Does it work on a phone? Nope.
Does it work on an iPad? Nope.
Does it work on an android tablet? Nope
Does it work on anything other than a high spec x86 based system? Nope.
Can the user access it through a browser? Nope.
This is the same desktop app, on a better backend, with a built in cloud backup facility. They are right to say little has changed, because aside from moving to sql / C# - little HAS changed.
Oh, except the bugs, yeah, last years release has already had eight service packs. Yeah, you read that right. 8.
http://community.myob.com/t5/Upgrading-to-AccountRight-2011/Upgraded-to-Accountright-2012-Bad-Move/td-p/146158
Question for MYOB: If two users are altering a file and the internet connection goes down, which forces AR to fail over into local mode, whose changes get pushed to the cloud when your net comes back up. Because if MYOB has solved that issue, two users changing records offline then syncing that into one coherent file, then I will eat my left shoe.
Syncing is hard, online/offline is the worst of both worlds.
Which means that cloud-based software could (should?) be considered "vapour-ware"?
As far as I'm concerned, the "cloud" is the biggest con job that the IT industry has foisted on to the unsuspecting public since Microsoft convinced people that Windows was a good server operating system.
You're relying on a 3rd party (the cloud provider) to ensure the sanctity and security of your data, and when you want to delete it that it is properly and securely deleted.
Until cloud-providers can provide incontrovertible proof that your data is managed (or disposed/destroyed) properly, I wouldn't trust them at all, no matter what their claims to the contrary.
"MYOB's operating system based native DB is extremely fast. Much faster than MS SQL, MySQL, Oracle, whatever.
Like all of that ilk, it doesn't scale very well, and it doesn't network very well."
Doesn't network very well? You must have some very strange ideas about what networking means to multi user databases. Not scalable? Well - you have something of a point, but scalable compared to MSAccess? You must have been working with some pretty small datasets or moderately large ones with very simple structures. 100GB - 1TB+ (of real data) on a desktop machine with anything like a normalised model and you learn to love real databases toot sweet.
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