Choosing back-office software has seldom been a more complex and convoluted task than it is right now. When it comes to the technical architecture of the underlying platforms on which vendors build their practice management or time and billing applications, it seems they are nearly all singing from the same hymn sheet: Microsoft is the future. The .NET platform for web services will make integration easier and future-proof the products’ architecture. But when you look beyond the glossy product brochures, things get quite confusing.
There are suppliers that jumped on the Microsoft bandwagon years ago, notably Aderant and Pilgrim Systems, which can claim to have ‘true’ .NET architecture. Both of these companies saw a downturn while they redesigned their products but their order books have been pretty full since January.
