Last year, I did not attend Sage's Summit conference because the company refused to provide any worthwhile information to the press. All we got were glowing promotions of the celebrities—nothing about product, strategy or promises of chances to meet with execs. And I was told we could not attend the reseller sessions. This year, I was trying to get information and so far it had been the same dreary tune.

Manufacturing software vendor QAD has opened Project Network, a marketplace site that enables its customers to find service providers for QAD-related projects. Service providers and consultancies can post profiles on the Network, which can be accessed through a link located on the Services tab at QAD.com or at projectnetwork.qad.com

The thought had been on my mind for a while that the low-end of the market has had far less noise from the players that swarmed into public in the last few years. It's seemed like Intuit, Xero and basically not much from anyone else. That gave me a chance to set up an easy kick for Russell Fujioka, president of Xero North America, with a question about the seeming disappearance of the great amount of noise we saw for a while with cloud-based accounting at this level.