Intuit CEO Brad Smith received $18.8 million in compensation for the year ended July 31. That was up 17.3 percent from the $16 million he received in fiscal 2015, according to documents filed with the SEC. But I view the biggest story as involving EVPs Daniel Wernikoff and Sasan Goodarzi. The two swapped jobs on May 1: Wernikoff becoming EVP of the Consumer Tax Group and Goodarzi, EVP of the Small Business Group. The switch is possibly a step towards choosing a successor for Smith, who has been CEO since 2008. Pay changes brought Wernikoff and Goodarzi to the same level. Wernikoff's, compensation rose to $10.1million, up 22.1 percent from $8.9 million in 2015. Goodarzi's compensation of $10.2 million for 2016, was up 10 percent from $9.3 million the prior year. Among the components of his compensation, Smith received $2.3 million from the incentive plan, a rise of 60 percent from $1.5 million the prior. Stock awards represented the biggest source of pay in both years: $11.6 million in 2016, a 12-percent increase from $10.4 million for the prior year. Meanwhile chief technology officer Tayloe Stansbury received compensation of $7.3 million for fiscal 2016, a rise of 10 percent from $6.3 million. CFO Neil Williams had only a slight increase in compensation, which hit $7.94 million. The compensation committee had declared his performance—and the performances of the other four executives—to be outstanding. However, his $7.88 million in compensation for 2015, was 39.5 percent higher than in 2014.

SAP has committed itself to stand behind its often-denigrated Business ByDesign cloud software. "We want to make sure Business ByDesign is the de facto ERP cloud product for the SME space," said Rodolpho Cardenuto, president of SAP's global channels and general business.

Macola has signed eight resellers in the last quarter. And that is probably more new VARs that the manufacturing software unit had signed in the prior10 years. The resellers represent a wide-range of products—Dynamics, Sage, SAP, Acumatica, Syspro, Intuit, Xero.