Sage has extended an alliance with Microsoft via which the two will collaborate on product development on the Office 365 platform. This follows this year's agreement with Salesforce.com which enabled the company to get Sage Live to the market. The Sage announcement said, "Sage will deliver next-generation accounting and bookkeeping productivity tools built on best-in-class Microsoft cloud solutions."  (Does Sage have bookkeeping software?) The press release is not that clear about the kind of products that will be developed and I've had no luck getting clarification or any statement that this is as much as we will get for the moment.

The surprising that about the announcement that Xero has built an integration with Avalara's sales tax rates and returns is that it has not happened before. Avalara has integrated with about every accounting software package you can think of, but not with the New Zealand company's cloud package previously. Avalara has also linked its TrustFile tax return service with Xero so they can prepare sales tax returns.

Sixty percent of new QuickBooks users are starting with QuickBooks Online. That number was reported by SVP Dan Wernikoff as Intuit held its annual investor's Day webcast this week. The company also expects that number to grow. But the executive admitted Intuit has been surprised that despite the move to the cloud 75 percent of revenue still comes from the desktop business. One reason is the accounting community. "Accountants have been slow to migrate their customers on line," Wernikoff says.