Since Sage’s notice as a response to Microsoft’s decision to discontinue development of FRx, there has been a great deal of speculation as to what the ultimate outcome would be. During a recent discussion in the MAS 90 and MAS 200 Users and Consultants, Erik Kaas (Director, Product Management at Sage Software) confirmed that Sage has “established an OEM relationship with a business intelligence (BI) vendor (Alchemex) that offers advanced financial reporting, operational reporting, and advanced OLAP analysis capabilities.” He went on to explain Sage MAS customers (I assume only those with current software/maintenance plans) will be licensed for one free user of Alchemex with the option of purchasing additional licenses. He also made a point to note Sage will work on keeping future releases of MAS 90 backwards compatible with FRx.

Jacqueline Li (Product Manager at Sage) clarified that it is Alchemex’s Smart Reporting Stack (with a similar drill-down function to FRx) that will be available  but the development plan includes  bringing Analytics and Web Reporting along for MAS 90 users. are under construction. Erika Jelovsek (Senior Product Manager, Sage) further clarified that the free license will be released later in the calendar year as a product update after the initial release of version 4.4.