Sage to widen developer programme

Sage UK is planning to expand its developers' programme in 2013, which will allow companies to integrate their own offerings with Sage products and customise them for their own market segments.

Darren Liddell, manager of the Sage developers’ programme, said, "With an expanding product portfolio, including the impending release of Sage 200 Cloud onto the Microsoft Azure platform, we look forward to welcoming new members.”

Sage developers can get involved with micro market, small business or mid-market activities, and can access software development kits, developer community resources, training courses, and get licences to use Sage software in-house and for development, testing and demonstration purposes.

Independent software developers can also benefit from marketing support and access to Sage’s 840,000 strong customer base, where they can promote their products, services and add ons. Sage also has strategic partnerships with the likes of RIM, Netvibes and Microsoft.

Sage last month spelled out plans to double its growth rate from three percent over the past 10 years to six percent over the next three years by investing in ‘high potential’ products - cloud and mobile.

This involves taking a decision that rather than developing its own cloud infrastructure, it is going to align itself with Microsoft and use its assets.

In other software development news, it was alleged this week that Facebook took money from software developers for an "empty" application verification programme, that offered no special checks above those carried out for all applications. The allegation was made by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC).