The chairman of financial software firm Accountz ignited a storm of controversy last week with an opportunistic press release claiming that Cloud computing is a “rip off”, leading to accusations from rivals of self-serving and trolling.
As a way of attracting attention to his company, the provocative press release from Quinten Pain of Accountz seemed to succeed in its aims. In it he claimed that the Cloud was being used to rachet up software prices and that web-based software is not as well suited to accounting as other, more mobile activities. Pain said:
“There’s a lot of hype about Cloud computing, but in the accounting sphere, it’s not really an advantage. Small business owners don’t manage their accounts in the same way as they check their email. They don’t grab five minutes on a train to enter invoices into their purchase ledger, or work out their VAT return. Book-keeping is something they’d really rather not be doing and they need cheque books, folders of receipts, credit card statements and red-ink paid stamps laid out in front of them. And those who do want to send an invoice out while on the move can do it more quickly and reliably with software installed on their laptops than with cloud services that require 100% permanent internet connections.”
But the reaction from Cloud developers has been fierce. On BusinessZone.co.uk, Darren Fell, managing director of Cloud accounting provider Crunch, responded:
“Aside from the obviously self-serving faux-outrage to flog Quentin Pain’s software, his analysis of the SaaS market is remarkably wrong-headed in many respects.”
Fell argued that the Cloud was all about providing service as well as software - customers who don’t like the up-front payments required for traditional desktop software pay a monthly fee instead to get all future updates, with no installation needed and technical support added in. Because web-based systems are universally compatible, they can operate on different computer systems as well as tablets and smartphones, he argued:
“ I can only assume Mr Pain is a man who carries a printer and carrier pigeon around with his laptop, as last I checked an internet connection was required to email an invoice. ”
Pain shot back:
“My point is simply that accounting using a web-based service costs around £2,000 over 10 years, whereas a desktop solution (which doesn’t have a subscription) costs considerably less, with the added benefit that you get to keep your data and the software forever. You can quote on things like printing and make a joke of it… but how many people in business actually issue an invoice on say, the train? ”
Meanwhile on Accountingweb.co.uk, Gary Turner, Managing Director of Xero, commented:
“These inflammatory comments from Accountz constitute nothing more than trolling which certainly makes for attention-grabbing and entertaining reading for a couple of hours, but they do not in all honesty constitute a proper debate or argument. Indeed I would sincerely doubt you'd find many on premise software execs that would agree with Mr Pain, let alone cloud execs. You can be forgiven for shining a spotlight on them for the purposes of light entertainment, but it's a stretch to hope they may lead to some form of reasonable discussion on the subject.”
