We know the survey may have been a surprise to many of you who have been waiting on a new beta version on a new platform. I would like to take a few minutes to explain where we are and the direction of the company.
Many of you have recently completed a survey we sent you relating to feature sets for a new version of our shopping cart software.
At the end of last year we were in the process of developing a new platform for Pinnacle Cart that would take us into the next decade. As we began developing the product we also began to understand the challenges and opportunities associated with PA DSS (Payment Applicant Data Security Standard). Visa and MasterCard will begin to enforce this new standard on all shopping carts and any payment application that accepts credit cards in July of 2010. In a nutshell, as a small business owner, this is another requirement for you to be PCI compliant.
Certification is an expensive and time consuming process as we work with a 3rd party QSA recommended by Visa/MC. In addition, our company will have to absorb this expense every time we come out with a significant change to our software. We are making every effort to not pass this expense along to our customers and have been able to keep that goal to date by not increasing the cost of the software. But as you can probably imagine it has forced us to change the way we look at development and releases. The great news for you is Pinnacle Cart will be a leader in PA DSS certification and education.
We have made a major decision to delay the release 4.0 and certify “Pinnacle Cart 3.7 PA DSS.” Of course, by default, it will also mean that 4.0 will also be certified when it is released. The survey you received some time back will go a long way to defining the some of the features associated with 3.7. Many of the features are in the process of being built or already have been built and Craig will have a post about the feature set and the timeline to release. This was a difficult decision as we are very excited about getting to the new platform. The funny thing about the new platform is that it actually IS the reason we decided to come out with an interim release. A new platform undoubtedly creates challenges for upgrades. Though we will provide documentation, a path to upgrade and continue to offer services to assist in the upgrade there will still be work to do. On the other hand, if you are on a 3.4, 3.5 or 3.6 series cart, upgrading to a 3.7 cart is quite easy. Combined, it was obvious we needed to certify a new release for older clients who now must upgrade to 3.7 to have a PA DSS certified shopping cart. Providing choices for our customers has been a cornerstone of our business and this is a great example of changing our direction to better server our entire customer base.
We are excited and look forward to a summer release of 3.7 and a substantial new feature set.
Mike Auger
