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THE FIRST ENVISION AND MARKET CHANGE Featured

Linda Rose, RoseASPFor various reasons, I reneged on my plan not to attend Microsoft Envision, the conference that begins this weekend in New Orleans. For one, it is New Orleans. For another, with Andy Vabulas retiring from I.B.I.S. after the conference, I believe in showing people you appreciate them in person whenever possible. Beyond that, curiosity is a driving factor.

The rather stumbling change from Convergence to Envision merely reflects the uncertainty as the market moves from long established patterns in mid-market software to something else. If I were wise enough to describe accurately what that something else will be, I would quickly become very rich and I'm just not that smart. The fracturing conference environment tells us what Microsoft is telling us—there is a significant difference between the market for Dynamics AX and that for what the software vendor calls the SMB packages—Dynamics GP, NAV and SL. Or take a look at a Sage whose reliance on Salesforce.com for Sage Live told us it did not have time to let overdue investment in R&D bring it back into serious contention and its emphasis on Impact, Live and One seems to say it acknowledges it cannot be the same player in the midmarket it has been. It's on its way to trying to become Intuit, or something similar and that may be a smart idea. After all, Intuit is strong in the United States, Xero in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom and nobody has yet put together a company that has strength across the board. This reminds me of last year's question from Linda Rose, who has evolved from running a traditional resellers, Rose Business Solutions, to operating the hosting business, RoseASP (and who canceled an initial plan to exhibit at Envision). She asked if hosting companies should be considered for inclusion in Bob Scott's Top 100 VARs and my response was a very perceptive, "uh, well , maybe, uh, I don't know. Check back with me later." What I think is that in two or three years, we will a very good idea of the next business model in financial applications and a lot of us will be looking admiringly at the people who figured it out and saying, "Boy, I wish I'd thought of that."

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