While at Microsoft, he was director of Dynamics partner strategy for the Worldwide Partner Group in 2008 and 2009 and director of the software vendor's U.S software asset management program from 2004 through 2008. His accounting software lineage goes back to Solomon Software, which was acquired by Great Plains early in 2000 and Microsoft picked up the whole package later early in 2001. Deshaies takes over the job vacated last year with the departure of Tom Miller, another long-timer Great Plains/Microsoft channel person. Miller left Sage in March and took a job with Sage reseller Net@Work. Don Deshaies is a brother to Robert Deshaies who was  EVP at Sage from January 2010 through July 2012. He was also at Microsoft from 1994 through November 2009 and was VP of the U.S. Partner Group in his last four years there.