Marc Linden has become EVP and GM of Sage’s Medium Segment Native Cloud Solutions. Sage made the formal announcement this week although Linden, who was previously CFO, saw his new title on the Sage leadership team webpage for the past two weeks or so.

The new title puts him in charge of Intacct and People. He also becomes a member of Sage’s executive committee, apparently taking over for Robert Reid, chairman of the mid-market solutions group. About the same time Linden’s new title appeared on the site, Reid was no longer shown as a member of the executive committee.  Asked about that last week, Sage Intacct said that was an “oversight”. All of these raises the question of whether Reid is moving toward retirement. Intacct simply said Reid is still active with the company. In other moves, Sue Goble was named chief customer success officer. She had served as EVP of business operations and services from September 2016. Also getting a new job was Derk Bleeker, who was named chief corporate development officer, responsible for portfolio simplification, M&A and business planning. Bleeker, who was been with Sage since September 2014, served as  EVP corporate development from the beginning and added commercial finance to his title in March.

Bill McDermott, who has been CEO or CO-CEO since 2010, will leave his job running SAP at the end of the year. He is turning the job over to executive board members, Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein as co-CEOs.

The move will leave a significant part of the enterprise software market with leadership transitions. Infor CEO Charles Phillips in August stepped aside as CEO to become chairman, after 10 years in the top executive job. Meanwhile, Oracle co-CEO Mark Hurd, who had been fighting an undisclosed disease for 18 months, went on medical leave in September.  SAP has a history of naming co-CEOs but has not had one since Jim Hagemann Snabe left the position in 2014. He has been with SAP for 17 years and when he joined as president of SAP America. In naming Morgan, SAP keeps an American in top leadership. With SAP for 15 years five months, Morgan was president of SAP North America from May 2014 through 2018. She joined the executive board and added Asia and the Pacific to her portfolio. In April, she was named president of SAP’s Cloud Business Group. Klein joined the enterprise software company in March 2012. He became COO and chief controlling officer in April 2016 and joined the executive board in January 2018.

Nick Goode has become EVP of X-3 for Sage. Goode, who was been with the software company since April 2019, took over his position in July. It was a bit surprising as Goode was not present in June when Sage held its first-ever X-3 user conference.

However, he apparently was swamped at the time as he also served as VP of marketing for the United Kingdom and Ireland from March through last month. Goode was previously EVP of product from June 2017 through April. The appointmennt may reflect how important X-3 is to Sage's future.

Letty Ledbetter, VP of global communications, has left her position at FinancialForce. It’s the latest in a series of resignations of high-level executives from the cloud software company.

In an email this week, Ledbetter said she had resigned the position she held since February 2018, after spending nearly 18 years in executive PR positions at Oracle. She gave no indication oof her planns. Among the departures are former chief revenue officer Michael Jerich, who took a job at ServiceMax in August, after six months in his position at FinancialForce. Jerich replaced Todd Sudery who worked at the software company for nine months through November last year. Former chief marketing officer Fred Studer, who was hired in March 2017, resigned in July. Several sales executives also left in the last 18 months, including Chris Lee, who served as SVP of North American sales from September 2016 through September 2018.

During our recent Danube cruise, my wife and I saw a show by me dressed as traditional Hungarian cowboys. That included a cart driven a taken of Hungarian gray oxen, who were often called upon to pull stuck vehicles out of the mud. 

You can imagine the call to Triple A in the 1800s: "You're stuck in the mud? OK we can have a team of oxen to you in about three hours". … Saw a couple of branches of the Transylvania Bank in Romania. It only accepts night deposits. They take both cash and blood. … Visited the palace of Nicolae Ceaușescu, the Communist Dictator who ruled the country from 1965 through 1989. He and his wife Elena died after requesting to be executed together. I just love couples who celebrate togetherness. … President Trump is very concerned about what’s going on in the Ukraine. He wants to know how many electoral votes it has. … Certainly, the hottest topic about political jobs under the next administration will be who does not want to be ambassador to the Ukraine. … With China upset about the tweet by Houston Rockets GM  Daryl Morey in support of Hong Kong protests, I guess we won’t be seeing that new Chinese NBA league anytime soon.

During the safety drill on our ship on the Danube this week, one of the officers asked, “Are there any question?” “Yes,” I said. “Is there wi-fi on the lifeboats?”

… We were at a wine tasting in Eastern Croatia today. After the server filled my glass, the server looked at me. “Is there something you need?” “I can’t drink it this way. Where’s the paper bag?” I replied. When someone said the wine prices in the country are low, I asked, “I bet Thunderbird is dirt cheap”. … We visited Vukovar, which was substnatially destroyed in the civil war in the Balkans. Looking at the bullet pockmarks in one house I told my wife, “Boy when the old guy next door yelled ‘You kids, keep off my lawn’,  you had to listen. ...On a long trip, there are times many of us start to feel a bit homesick. I decided the way to make the ship feel more like home was to find someone with opposite political views so the two of us can call each other names. ... Some fans are upset that the studios didn’t have actress Natalie Portman wear an adult diaper when in the movie “Lucie in the Sky”, she portrayed astronaut Lisa Nowak, who drove 900 miles to confront her boyfriend and his new girlfriend. Nowak’s lawyers contended the oft repeated story about the diapers. I bet the studio sacrificed a lot of money it could have received by signing Depends as a sponsor. President Trump is going crazy trying to identify the whistleblower in the White House. He is telling aides to put recording devices everywhere to find it, because he just can’t hear that whistle. … We were told we were having an Elvis impersonator on the ship one night. “What’s the Elvis impersonator do?” the person next to me said. “He gets fat and dies,” I replied. …. The town of Ilok, where the winery was located has a church dedicated to John of C.....apistrano, a fifteenth-century priest who also fought the Ottoman Turks. It is assumed the location was chosen because of the annual migration of swallows in the spring. … 

 Viewpoint Analytics has been introduced at this week’s Viewpoint Collaborate Conference. The platform is designed to provide self-service reporting and predictive analytical capabilities to contractors.

Built on the Microsoft Azure Cloud, the product is being tested by several customers. Viewpoint is also working with the Construction Financial Management Association (CFMA) to embed key financial benchmarks created by the association and used industry-wide into Viewpoint Analytics’ data analysis offerings. Viewpoint said it is additionally working with Microsoft on new data science and artificial intelligence initiatives.

Lacking anything better to say to a neighbor who I was arguing with, I shot off,  “I take it you were attacked by a brain eating amoeba as a child.” … A couple of men have been arrested for getting off the designated path and leaning over the Old Faithful Geyser to take photographs.

In terms of religion it is believed they are broilers not fryers. …. Pharmaceutical company Bayer has decided to adjust to the litigation surrounding the Round Up herbicide marketed by its Monsanto operations. Roundup now comes with a coupon for discounted legal services. … When I see photos of Larry Ellison, with his chopped Van Dyke beard, I always think he looks like he should be playing a new version of the “Faust” tradition in which a businessman sells his soul in order to dominate the database market. … One dog food ad talks about the wild spirit in your dog and how a dog has the soul of a wolf. I guess my dog displays that when uses the kitty litter box as a snack station. … Always nice to watch the later parts of the baseball season, where the boys of summer become the boys of the chilling, late fall. Sometimes, you can tell when the pitcher is loading the ball in a late season game when it comes to the plate loaded with frost. … The fear that hundreds of thousands of people would descend on Area 51 in Nevada, a favorite subject of people with a fixation on aliens and conspiracy theories, turned out to be needless as dozens showed up. They didn’t find any aliens, but they did find something even stranger, recordings of recent interviews with former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani. But if you want to see strange, out-of-the-world beings, why bother with Area 51 when you can go to the mother lode, the Las Vegas strip.  … New York City mayor Bill de Blasio this week dropped out of the race for Democratic presidential nomination. New Yorkers responded with a warm welcome of “He was running for president?” 

Submissions are now being accepted for Bob Scott’s VAR Stars for 2019. VAR Stars is designed to acknowledge 100 quality firms in the mid-market reselling business for financial software regardless of size.

Firms chosen in past years have included single-person firms all the way up to the largest VARs.  We are looking for firms that have shown growth, produced innovative products or contributed in other ways, such as showing leadership and vision, to the mid-market. To receive a form, please contact me at bob.scott@pmg360.com and return your information as soon as Possibble. Along with the selection of Stars, we will be writing about market trends and talking to leading firms.

2018 BSI Top 100 VARS

Bob Scott's Insights would like to congratulate all the 2018 BSI Top 100 VARS winners.

This year's selection of Bob Scott's Top 100 VARs comes at a time of dramatic change to the business. Larger firms are becoming larger and all are grappling with the movement of the business from reliance on desktop software to the cloud. Read about the state of the market and the names of the selected resellers.

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The speculation over when the market will move to the cloud is over. Resistance has faded and however many holdouts there are, financial cloud software is mainstream. Read more to learn who is being recognized as a 2017 VAR Star.

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The last year has been one of change—the cloud has moved from being something everyone talked about to something most resellers are doing something about. It is also a market facing rapid automation through related technologies such as artificial intelligence, bots and machine learning. As usual, this year’s Bob Scott’s Top 100 VARs provides the names of dealers who are at the top of the mid-market in revenue. But they are a group that is rapidly changing how they operate.

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