Infor has started the Infor CloudSuite Academy, a training program for the company's channel. Infor said the program is designed to help customers select and implement Infor applications in the cloud. The products involved are Infor CloudSuite Industrial and Infor CloudSuite Business, which are available on Amazon's Web Services' cloud. The Academy will provide hands-on instruction on marketing, demonstrating, licensing and deploying applications. Live, virtual and self-paced learning are available.

Apax Partners has begun its all-cash tender offer for the shares of Exact Holding. The tender period ends on February 15 and is being conducted at 32 euro per share. At the current exchange rate—and with 22,816,661 shares outstanding—the deal is worth about $900.5 million. But the most interesting part of the offering memorandum is the strategy outline from Apax and that can be summed up as "cloud". Apax wrote that the buyout is "An opportunity to pursue an optimal cloud strategy." It explained the economics of a cloud transition might be understood or mis-valued by public investors so the company is better off in private hands while it makes the leap and that includes increasing R&D spending to 15 percent of Exact revenue. The buyers expect to invest aggressively in an international expansion for Exact's Cloud Solution division and notes their history of investment in pure-play cloud vendors, such as RealPage and Plex Systems, as giving themt the ability to handle the needs. Apax will support "accretive M&A" and said it could aid in considering acquisition targets. The most interesting phrase was it could help in "the contemplated disposal of certain U.S. assets and other strategic M&A transactions." I don't know if that means disposal under discussion or that might arise as the company has indicated it will utilize the channels of its Macola and JobBoss lines for building the American market for Exact Online. Max is sold direct so it does not seem to fit that strategy. Exact believes it can achieve annual organic growth of 4 percent to 7 percent and expects Cloud Solutions revenue to rise by 30 percent to 50 percent annually.

MicroEdge, purchased by Blackbaud in October, had a 3-percent increase in net income on a 4.9-percent rise in revenue for the nine months ended September 30. The MicroEdge numbers were disclosed by the nonprofit software vendor in a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. For the nine months, MicroEdge, based in New York City, had net income of $2.3 million, down from $2.4 million in last year's corresponding period.