Discontinued Products - Frequently Asked Questions

What does it mean to discontinue a product?
From time to time it becomes necessary to discontinue certain products, either due to aging technologies or changes in market requirements. The decision to discontinue a product impacts our customers and partners in the following areas:

Sales and Pricing
Products will be moved to the discontinued price list. This means that they can be purchased, but only at a 50% premium over SRP.

In the case of EPW, only additional users and employee counts will be available for sale at the premium price. Other modules will no longer be sold as of the discontinued date.

Support
Telephone support for discontinued products will be available at a 100% premium over regular pricing per incident. Further, Creative Software Pte Ltd reserves the right to fully terminate the availability of telephone support for discontinued products at any time without the obligation to provide notice.

Payroll Updates
Generally, Creative Software Pte Ltd endeavors to provide Payroll Update Plans (PUPs) for "current version and one version back." However, from time to time legislative changes make this impractical.

For EPW customers, we will be discontinuing Payroll Update Plans as of September 30, 2008.

Product Updates and Sage Cover (Software Assurance)
As of the discontinued date, updates and enhancements will no longer be provided. In addition, Sage Cover renewal invoices will no longer be sent to owners of discontinued products.

What other impact can I expect?
Existing users who choose to remain on their current software are advised to continue using their existing operating system, as we may be unable to support them on new versions once the product is discontinued.

Why have you made this decision?
Most small and midsized businesses (SMBs) have limited resources to invest in the evaluation and ongoing support of business technologies. We are dedicated to supporting these clients by providing the best value in business applications.

However, at some point old software becomes very expensive and inefficient for both the client and the vendor. For example, supporting new operating systems, networks, and hardware can be difficult for clients using legacy applications such as EPW. It is always in the best interest of clients to be on "strategic" products that best protect their investments and interests. Our strategic products are those that receive our greatest investment and attention, and provide the highest level of benefits to our customers.

What about those clients who are willing to keep using their obsolete solutions?
Current customers can likely continue to function on their current hardware and operating systems without impact. As long as their hardware and operating systems continue to operate, they can reasonably expect their software will work - although we are not in a position to guarantee this in every case. We will continue to sell additional users and employee counts so that companies that add users/employees can continue to function. In all other cases, we offer alternative products and migration assistance. We have removed every financial and operational barrier to make it easy for these customers to transition to EPE. We have given EPW customers a year's notice so they have ample time to determine how best to react to our decision.

What about customers with unused Sage Cover balances?
Customers who are current on Software Assurance (Sage Cover) may apply the unused portion of their Sage Cover payment (pro-rated by month) towards the purchase of EPE through September 30, 2008.