Sage 200 - Business Partner - Essential Software Maintenance

This communication was issued 13 February 2020.

Essential Software Maintenance

Notice 20-D | 13 February 2020

Dear Partner,

Sage is committed to keeping our customers secure. Making sure we reduce threats and take advantage of the latest technology. Meaning from time to time we need to upgrade the underlying components of our products.

Important Note: We have three key changes within Sage 200 that will require action from you to ensure our customers continue to receive a secure uninterrupted service. The planned changes affect our TLS security protocol, Sage ID & Banking services.

What does this mean for my business & customers?

Steps, including upgrades, will need to be completed by key dates to ensure the software continues to work & services aren't disrupted. The steps you’ll need to take vary depending on a customer’s Sage 200 version and / or connected services combination and will range from a registry change to reinstalling or upgrading the product.

Versions from 2013 upwards, regardless of Sage 200 product variation, are impacted in some way so it’s important to review our detailed guide to determine the next steps. To limit the impact to our partners & customers we’re sharing this information with you simultaneously to allow you to take a single set of steps and best plan for your customers.

What are the upcoming changes?

• TLS is a security protocol required for services such as Sage ID and the Sage Licensing Service, which enables products to communicate securely. The current versions of TLS: 1.0 / 1.1, are due to be deprecated from our product range and will be upgraded to TLS 1.2, providing greater security and simpler maintenance. Sage 200 makes use of TLS to communicate to a variety of services.
• Sage ID: Sage ID is transforming. Sage is undergoing a global transformation to a new system which is an underpin for our future identity strategy. Sage ID will support new standards such as JWT and Open ID and will replace our current Sage ID offering.
  • Note: This means any customers using Sage ID via core product or connected feature(s) will need to take action to ensure no disruption to their service.
• Banking: Our Banking Services are impacted by both the TLS and Sage ID changes. In addition, there is new legislation, Open Banking, which will impact existing users in one of three ways dependent upon the Bank being used.
  • Fully Open Banking compliant - most customers will simply need to re-authenticate with their current bank to continue to use the Banking Cloud Service.
  • Open Banking compliant with upgrade - certain banks require an upgrade of Sage 200. Once upgraded the customer will need to re-authenticate their Banking Cloud Service.
  • Existing Bank is not Open Banking compliant - certain banks are not open banking compliant and the Banking Cloud service will cease to function on 09 March 2020. In this case a customer will lose Banking Cloud functionality until their bank becomes Open Banking compliant. Further details can be found here.

    To determine which category your bank falls into, please refer to www.sage.com/OpenBanking.

• Sage Licensing Service: Will be impacted by the move to TLS 1.2. Therefore, all customers on 2013 up to, and including, Spring 2019 will be impacted and must be upgraded to a TLS 1.2 compliant version of Sage 200. Further down this notification we have outlined the dates by which customers on each version must upgrade.

  Please note that:

  • Customers may be required to upgrade earlier than the specified date, if they use additional services outlined in the communication.
  • Sage reserve the right to bring this date forward should we identify any security risks to our customers on TLS 1.0 / 1.1
• Sage CRM is also impacted by the upgrade to TLS 1.2. We are currently reviewing the technology impact and will send a separate communication to you on this.

What are Sage doing to support customers?

We appreciate that technology changes can be disruptive, but equally they are extremely important. To support our customers & partners we are re-launching key versions that contain the necessary updates. This gives choice and flexibility, in a large number of cases, to either reinstall or to upgrade to newer versions. We are remastering the following versions: 2016 SP2, Summer 2017 and Summer 2018.

These will be released alongside Sage 200 2020 R1 which also contains all of the necessary changes and additional features, you can find out more on our roadmap.

What are the key dates?

• Banking: Anyone using open banking will need to take action by 09 March 2020.
• Sage ID: Action before 31 August 2020.
• TLS: varies depending on which connected service is being used, please refer to our article for further details.
• Sage Licensing Service:
  
  • 2013 / 2015 / 2016 versions – action required by 30 Sept 2021
  • Summer 2017 version – action required by 30 Sept 2022
  • Winter 2017 / Spring 2018 / Summer 2018 versions – action required by 30 Sept 2023

Where can I find detailed information of all the changes? Click here to find out the information by version.

When will the software be available?

All variants will be made available no later than 03 March 2020.

Got a question?

Please speak to our Customer Services Team in the first instance.

Regards

Jo Kirkup

Product Manager: Sage 200