Infor has implemented a CloudSuite specialization program for alliance partners. The program enables participants to receive credentials that reflect their knowledge of the web-based line. "This program is designed to help ensure that every customer is able to take advantage of the speed and flexibility of a modern cloud platform, with the added confidence of a trained partner to help guide the transition onto an Infor cloud solution," Lisa Pope, an Infor SVP who is global head of cloud sales and strategy, said in a prepared statement.

Avalara's Compliance Cloud system has been embedded in Shopify Plus. It is a relationship that the sales and use tax company hopes will become a model for ecommerce. Shopify wrote the integration for the cloud application so that Avalara will automatically calculate tax for each invoice line item in real time in the Shopify Plus shopping cart. "Anybody that becomes a Shopify customer becomes an Avalara customer," says Marshall Kushniruk, Avalara's EVP of global business development.

Good-bye, Convergence; hello, Envision. And this week, after a bunch of people have probably already set plans for attending the Dynamics Convergence conference in New Orleans, La., Microsoft announced it will be holding a more general business show called Envision. Microsoft had said last year it would change the Convergence format and there had already been talk among ISVs that they would stop attending or significantly cut back on booth space. That will probably go for much of the channel that has attended for years.